Case Study Driving high performance

Intel® Xeon® Processor

Intel® Itanium® 2 Processor
Manufacturing
Collaborative Product
Development
Tata Motors reduces costs and accelerates time-to-market by
deploying high performance applications on Intel® architecture
Tata Motors was using a product lifecycle management (PLM) tool on a RISC- based platform
that had quite a few problems. The bill of material module was not tightly integrated with the
design data and visualization was not available across the organization creating bottlenecks
and need to physically travel to the design center to view the designs. Tata Motors needed to
work in a collaborative environment and adding these two functionalities meant a huge
increase in computer resources.

Similarly, its compute resources for design calculations were on stand alone PCs that were
scattered and sub-optimally utilized while other projects were facing capacity bottlenecks.

”If we go through Time had come to consolidate these on one server while giving maximum compute power at
the workstations. Heavy weight analysis applications that were critical for safety, comfort and
conventional
emission standards compliance needed to be deployed in-house to save on time and costs.
prototyped build
Fastest time-to-market, best price-performance ratios, investment-protection, scalability and
and test approach,
reliability were overwhelming concerns for all these.
the cycle time is
much higher and it Challenge • Existing RISC-based platform was not tightly integrated
has also got cost across the organizations’ needs, restricting work.
• Compute resources on standalone PCs were not optimized
disadvantages.
for maximum computing power causing projects to face
We depend on
capacity bottlenecks.
computer • Improve time-to-market, higher price-performance ratios,
techniques or scalability, reliability and lower investment risk.
computer based
Solution • UGS Teamcenter* product lifecycle management application
simulations
was deployed using Oracle 9i* database running on Itanium® 2
extensively to not processor-based SGI Altix*servers.
only keep pace— • All engineering math applications were consolidated on Intel®
but also be ahead Xeon® processor-based servers and the workstations were also
upgraded to Intel Xeon processor-based systems from IBM*.
in the game.“
• All analysis applications were deployed on Itanium® 2
Mr. Uma Maheshwaran
processor-based servers using 64 processors.
Chief Technology Officer
Tata Motors Ltd.
Intel® architecture was crucial to Tata Motors’ efforts
to design and manufacture vehicles in the most cost-
effective manner and in the shortest possible time.
Assessing the Situation
Tata Motors was using a product lifecycle
management tool on a RISC-based platform that had
quite a few problems. The bill of material module was
not tightly integrated with the design data and
visualization was not available across the organization
creating bottlenecks or need to physically travel to
Spotlight: Tata Motors
• Tata Motors is India's largest commercial vehicle
manufacturer and ranks among the top six
manufacturers of medium and heavy commercial
vehicles in the world. Established in 1945, it is
India's largest and only fully integrated automobile
company. Tata Motors began manufacturing
commercial vehicles in 1954 with a 15-year
collaboration agreement with Daimler Benz
of Germany. Since 1969, the company's
products have come out of its own design and
development efforts.
• Tata Motors' product range covers passenger
cars, multi-utility vehicles as well as light, medium
and heavy commercial vehicles for goods and
passenger transport. Seven out of ten medium
and heavy commercial vehicles in India bear the
trusted Tata mark.
• Tata Motors has the unique distinction of
giving India its first and only indigenously built
passenger car, the Tata Indica* and the premium
feature sedan, the Tata Indigo*. The Indica,
launched in 1998, reached the 2,50,000 sales
mark within 52 months of launch.
• As a company ethos, Tata Motors likes to deliver
functionality-loaded products at the lowest
possible price points while generating value for
its shareholders. The speed of decision-making
and go-to-market become critical success factors.
the design center to view the design. Adding these
two functionalities meant a huge increase in
computer resources. So, costs were a big concern.
Two years back, Tata Motors implemented
Teamcenter*, an integrated product lifecycle
management application from UGS* which helps in
managing the product data throughout its lifecycle.
This includes managing the engineering bill of material;
the associated 2D & 3D data; engineering change
management; and, certification and design documents.
Being mission critical in nature, the user-ship of this
application is very wide and cuts across several
functions in Tata Motors including design and
development groups, planning and manufacturing
groups and few other groups.
These groups have created some of the hottest
selling cars in India namely Indica*, Indigo*, Safari*
and Sumo* besides best in the breed commercial
vehicles that cater not just to India but global markets
as well. Besides their design expertise, they need to
ensure the fastest go-to-market at the lowest
production cost. The visualization software is a tool
within UGS* Teamcenter* that gives this group the
ability to view and review the end product even
before it is prototyped.
The product thus finalized, is broken into bill of
material; 2D & 3D data libraries for all components
and sub-assemblies; the certification and design
documentation of the components, sub-assemblies
as well as the complete vehicle so as to meet even
the most stringent of global requirements.
The input of design groups is critical for the planning
and manufacturing process wherein they need to
take make-or-buy decisions; and, design, plan and
execute the manufacturing process. They also give
 feedback to designers on engineering changes
as an iterative process. This means a huge
amount of traffic on the fiber optics-based
gigabit network at Tata Motors.
Tool design group uses this input to decide on
the tooling requirements for all the components
that are to be manufactured in-house. Sales
and marketing uses it as a pre-sales tool to
visualize and plan campaigns, launch, test
marketing and desirable add-ons. The senior
management uses this application to make critical
business decisions like styling review, roll outs,
targets and likely shareholder value creation.
This necessitated a look out for a new hardware
platform that could handle this hugely demanding
”Once we entered
deployment of product lifecycle management.
into the passenger
car market, comfort, When it comes to passenger comfort, safety
and environmental issues, Tata Motors likes to
safety and
follow a no compromises approach. It was using
compliance to
LS-DYNA* and Nastran* to handle some of
government
these areas on a RISC based platform. It was
regulations became however finding speed to be a major bottleneck
top priority for the while users were also facing capacity constraints
company. You have to handle growing number of projects at
to do a lot of Tata Motors.
simulation work to Furthermore, design validation work which
meet very stringent required the use of FLUENT* and ABAQUS*
regulatory applications was being outsourced. This meant
requirements for higher costs, poor turnaround time and less
• Benchmarking them for performance.
• Pilot testing with the vendors to see how
they measure up in the real life environment
at Tata Motors.
• Techno-commercial comparisons.
• Final Selection.
Delivering the Solution
Tata Motors decided on different aspects of
the deployment over the last two years. In the
reckoning were RISC-based proprietary systems
of every hue, non-RISC architecture based
systems and Intel® processor-based systems
from several leading vendors. Intel along with
its OEM’s was always there to play a crucial role
in terms of not just providing consultancy on
sizing and technology issues but also kept Tata
Motors updated on its product roadmap.
Testimonials and case study examples of similar
applications from other parts of the world were
also provided to re-enforce the comfort level.
Tata Motors decided on the following solution
attributes that they would look for:
• Very good response and processing time
despite the manifold increase in resource
requirements due to additional functionality
being added.
• Low total cost of ownership.

safety, emission control. Limited workgroup functionality also

• Reliability of the platform.
meant delays in the iterative process between
standards and other
various groups resulting in cascading delays, • Scalability in terms of handling more design
areas. Using projects while catering to an increased number
increased time to market. Security of intellectual
computer-based property was also an area of concern. of users. The new functionality meant the
simulations is critical original 100 users going up to 500 users for the
When so much depends on the choice of
to turn around new bill of material module and design data alone.
platform, it is a decision which Tata Motors
products faster.“ This is further likely to go up to substantially, so
takes very seriously and a no compromises
Mr. Uma Maheshwaran selection process which involves: enough headroom for growth is essential.
Chief Technology Officer
Tata Motors Ltd • Market scan of all available options and • Easy to administer and manage.

technologies. • Platform support from application vendors.

The exacting standards of design at Tata
Motors call for quite a bit of engineering math
calculation to ensure a product as close to
perfection as possible. Output from software
like MATLAB*, Mathcad* and TKSolver* is used
to ensure winning designs by the design groups
at Tata Motors. While these applications were
deployed in abundance on standalone PCs, it
also meant no workgroup functionality and a
sub-optimal use of resources. Tata Motors was
seeking to consolidate all these on a server
while enhancing raw compute power at the
client end.
This meant going in for a platform that would
fulfill the following needs:
• Maximum processing power at the lowest cost.
• Ease of administration and management.
• Investment protection of migrating
existing applications.
• Wide choice of vendors.
• Low cost of Maintenance.
• Ability for 400 designers to be able to use it
to better utilize the resources
Key Technologies
• SGI Altix* Itanium® 2 processor-based
servers
• IBM* 64-bit Intel® Xeon® processor-based
servers and workstations
• UGS Teamenter* product lifecycle
management application
• Oracle 9i* database
• MATLAB*, Mathcad* and TKSolver*, LS-
DYNA*, Nastran*, FLUENT* and ABAQUS*
analysis and design applications
The deployment ”This deployment
UGS Teamcenter* product lifecycle
will add a critical
management application is deployed with an
dimension to our
Oracle 9i* database running on SGI Altix*
servers using 12 Intel® Itanium® 2 processors at
IT infrastructure,
the enterprise level at Pune and 8 Intel® enabling Tata
Itanium® 2 processor-based servers are Motors to design
deployed for locations at Jamshedpur, Lucknow and manufacture
and even at the Tata Daewoo Commercial automobiles that
Vehicles facility in Korea. The deployment is
best suit our
nearly two years old. Between all these servers
markets, in the
10 Terabytes of data is handled in a
most cost-effective
collaborative environment.
manner and in the
“We found database performance of Intel®
shortest possible
Itanium® 2 processor-based servers to be the
time. We would
best for the Teamcenter* application. It was 50
percent faster than comparably configured
whole-heartedly
RISC-based servers at substantially lower cost,” recommend Intel for
says Mr. Uma Maheshwaran, CTO, Tata Motors. high-performance
computing
For LS-DYNA*, Nastran*, FLUENT* and
ABAQUS*— very resource hungry analysis applications that
applications —Tata Motors selected 64 are mission critical.
processor configurations of Intel® Itanium® 2 Their open
processor-based servers having 512GB of RAM architecture and
and handling 1 terabyte of data. an overwhelming
case for price-
Integral Answers performance make
for a clinching
• Tata Motors now experience faster time-to-
argument in
market due to tighter coupling of the
workgroup. No compute capacity bottleneck their favor.“
is reported and full functionality is available Mr. Uma Maheshwaran
Chief Technology Officer
across the organization. This makes decisions
Tata Motors
run faster and smoother.
• There has been a substantial reduction in
cost due to a lower total cost of ownership,
optimal usage of resources and bringing the
full analysis functionality in-house.
• Increased number of projects can now be
handled simultaneously at enhanced speed
and improved quality in terms of comfort,
safety and emission attributes. Number of
users for Teamcenter* alone has grown 5x.
“Even for the taxing analysis work, RISC-based systems were found to be
performing at half the level of Intel® Itanium® 2 processor-based servers and Return on Investment
that too at a substantially steeper price point,” adds Mr. Maheshwaran.
• Substantial cost reductions due to a lower
For the raw compute power and consolidation of engineering math applications, total cost of ownership, optimal usage of
Tata Motors decided for 64-bit Intel® Xeon® processor-based workstations and resources and bringing the full analysis

servers from IBM*. “We found more compelling price-performance ratios in case functionality in-house.

of Intel® processor-based servers compared to other non-RISC systems“, says • Faster time to market due to tighter coupling
Mr. Uma Maheshwaran. of the workgroup, no compute capacity
bottlenecks and full functionality being
“The selection process reinforced our belief in Intel® processor-based products.
available across the organization. Makes
Benchmarking as well as pilot testing results were better than expected,” sums
decisions run faster, smoother.
up Mr. Maheshwaran.
• Increased number of projects can be handled
simultaneously at enhanced speeds.

• A 5x increase in number of users already

going up further.

• Improved quality in terms of comfort, safety

and emission attributes.

• Enhanced reliability and availability – zero

downtime so far.

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64-bit Intel® Xeon® processors with Intel® EM64T requires a computer system with a processor, chipset, BIOS, OS,
device drivers and applications enabled for Intel EM64T. Processor will not operate (including 32-bit operation) without
an Intel EM64T-enabled BIOS. Performance will vary depending on your hardware and software configurations. Intel
EM64T-enabled OS, BIOS, device drivers and applications may not be available. Check with your vendor for more
information. Performance will vary depending on the specific hardware and software you use. See most up to date
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