Yeşilova Group

The battery pack is the most expensive part of an electric vehicle. A large slab, containing hundreds to thousands of individual battery cells that power the motors, serves as the interface between the powertrain and the car’s structural elements, and accounts for at least a quarter of the total vehicle cost. Protecting it is therefore a top priority. That’s why companies like Yeşilova Group have turned their attention to developing innovative structures for safely and securely housing the battery pack in the vehicle.

Based in Turkey, Yeşilova specializes in making aluminum products and counts leading automotive manufacturers among its major customers. In the 45 years it has been in business, the company has evolved from selling aluminum sheets to delivering an end-to-end service, working with its clients to provide aluminum parts that meet their specific needs. Today, Yeşilova’s research and development team is busy working on new aluminum components for the next generation of cars.

“Our department is responsible for automotive innovation,” said Onur Sinak, new product development engineer at Yeşilova. “Our main focus is developing aluminum chassis parts and we’re the first to coordinate a European Union funded project in Turkey to develop a battery case structure.”

Creating the battery case is a challenging design task as it must satisfy a catalogue of requirements, including being lightweight, crash-proof, corrosion-resistant, electromagnetically shielded and able to regulate temperature. For Yeşilova, which is committed to building a better world, aluminum is the ideal material for this particular component in terms of properties, efficiency and sustainability – it is available in abundance and is highly recyclable. The finished product is the result of a successful collaboration with its automotive OEM clients and cutting-edge design – all achieved on the 3DEXPERIENCE® platform.

When Yeşilova adopted the 3DEXPERIENCE platform on the cloud, one of the key drivers was to use the same industryleading design tools, including the design application CATIA, as its automotive clients.

“Many of our customers use CATIA to design their products and we wanted to be able to speak the same language as them,” Sinak said. “With the 3DEXPERIENCE platform on the cloud, we can carry out joint work as a single voice – our engineers, customers and suppliers on each project can come together as one to design flexibly and at speed. Another added bonus is that many engineering students learn CATIA and so they join us already knowing how to use the application. They appreciate how user friendly it is.”

With this new collaborative approach, Yeşilova can resolve design issues early – before they become costly and impact production.

“Handling our design processes on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, we can seamlessly go through revisions before progressing to technical drawings for production,” Sinak said. “We are seeing lots of benefits from using the platform. We’re accelerating our design processes and can visualize design constraints to prevent mistakes. We can reuse designs too, which really helps us to work more efficiently.”

Critically, the 3DEXPERIENCE platform allows Yeşilova to integrate its design and product lifecycle management software in one place to enable cross-discipline collaboration and achieve full traceability throughout the entire product development lifecycle and beyond. Compatibility functionality also allows existing CATIA and non-CATIA models to be brought into the platform natively.

“We currently have over 60 engineers connected to the platform,” Sinak said. “Our plan is to integrate all disciplines on the platform so that everyone has a single view of the product lifecycle. This is essential for us and one of the main reasons we chose 3DEXPERIENCE.”

Yeşilova worked with consultants from Cadem Digital, a Dassault Systèmes business partner in Turkey, to handle its transition to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform on cloud.

“We knew they would be able to help us shape our vision and take best advantage of the platform,” Sinak said. “They have been a great support as we’ve got up and running on it.”

Not only did Cadem Digital handle the implementation and develop training programs, it also supported Yeşilova in mapping its business processes to the platform.

“They helped our users arrange their set up to suits their business needs,” Sinak said. “We didn’t have to change many processes and the ones we did were really easy.”

Yeşilova’s decision to opt for a cloud implementation of the platform is already paying dividends, with low upfront investment, always up-to-date applications, and anytime, anywhere access supporting its engineers to work remotely.

“The 3DEXPERIENCE platform on cloud was the right decision for our business needs and has been particularly useful for remote working,” Sinak said. “Compared to an on-premise system, we have a lot more flexibility. And the speed of the cloud platform helps us to work and communicate effectively with our clients. We can easily collaborate with each other from completely different locations.”

Data security is a top priority, and Cadem Digital and Yeşilova’s IT department addressed any concerns associated with using public cloud servers.

“When we consulted our IT workers, they told us that the risk of working on cloud is much lower than working on local servers,” Sinak said. “All our projects are stored on the cloud and we have no concerns. Neither do our customers. They also share and store their know-how on the cloud.”

Yeşilova takes its role as a sustainable business seriously. Building on its credentials developing high-quality, longlasting aluminum products, the company plans to extend its technological capabilities and use the 3DEXPERIENCE platform on the cloud to further streamline its product development processes beyond design through to manufacturing and sales to cover the entire product lifecycle.

“The next step is to integrate our production processes, production planning, project management and engineering change,” Sinak said. “All of these developments will help us become more efficient. We have chosen a future-proof platform that will grow with our business needs and support us to adapt to fast-changing industry trends.”