• En

Category: EFI partner of the biggest

Global presence and flexibility: key assets for collaborating with major car manufacturers

Global presence and flexibility: key assets for collaborating with major car manufacturers

EFI Automotive works with the world’s leading manufacturers. Thanks to its production sites on several continents and a high degree of adaptability to customer needs, the group has won numerous contracts with major manufacturers.

“Today’s manufacturers are thinking globally: although they are based in the United States, the major manufacturers like GM and Ford with whom we work have needs on all continents.” Adam Kirwin is Sales Director for EFI Automotive and has been working with Ford for many years: “Customers like this are looking for suppliers who can produce as close as possible to their factories, whether in the USA, Europe or China.” EFI Automotive, which has 12 locations on three continents (Europe, USA, Asia), offers global coverage that allows it to be as close as possible to its customers during the development of a project. To respond to and win the calls for tenders launched by GM and Ford, EFI Automotive was able to mobilize its American teams in Plymouth, Michigan, near Detroit, the birthplace of the two American manufacturers. Throughout these global projects, in order to best meet the customer’s needs, it is imperative to set up a robust project team with a single point of contact: “This is the role of the Global Account Manager,” explains Adam Kirwin, “he or she will coordinate the project for all the sites, manage the research, prototyping and production start-up phase, and be the one who will report on progress and any difficulties that may arise. His or her ability to share information well and to get people from different cultures working together in geographically remote areas is essential to the smooth running of the project.”

A tailor-made solution

Another advantage of EFI Automotive in meeting the expectations of the automotive giants is its flexibility. “While Ford is a long-standing customer, we were not yet referenced with GM,” explains Adam Kirwin, “when they were looking for a solution to remotely automate the parking brake function on their electric vehicles, we offered them not a off-the-shelf solution, but a tailor-made solution, which we developed with them.” The e-lock parking brake solution was also an opportunity for EFI Automotive to demonstrate its ability to innovate and offer new solutions for the electric and hybrid vehicle engines for which it was developed. In the end, GM was won over by this solution, which better met its expectations and also had the advantage of being more compact and therefore easier to integrate into its engines. The EFI Automotive site in Plymouth then underwent quality tests and received the TASL Approved label, an essential key to joining the American manufacturer’s list of suppliers.

From 5,000 to 20,000 hours of development

The duration and number of staff behind the various projects depends on the complexity of the specifications. Depending on whether we are supplying a completely new part or a part that we are already producing in series, the project could require between 5,000 and 20,000 hours of development time and involve between 3 and 10 people. The contracts then include a production period of five years, generally renewable. For the tenders related to GM and Ford, production at EFI Automotive’s American, European and Chinese sites should total around 25 million parts!

Joint project with the CEA on predictive actuator control

Joint project with the CEA on predictive actuator control

EFI innovates for everyone

EFI Automotive partners with CEA to develop the actuator of the future

In order to offer its customers ever more innovation, EFI Automotive has teamed up with Leti, a laboratory of the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), to develop a new generation of actuators, controlled by a predictive control algorithm.

 

Each year, the EFI Automotive group devotes around 8% of its turnover to research and development in order to offer its customers new, ever more innovative and efficient products. Today, it is partnering with Leti, a laboratory of the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), to develop a new generation actuator. “Our objective is to develop an actuator whose control law, i. e. the algorithm that drives it, is based on a prediction system,” explains Vincent Liébart (Real Time Electronics Engineer), “concretely, we want to develop an algorithm that does not limit itself to the past and present states of the actuator to decide which control to apply to the actuator but is able to anticipate their consequences and verify in real time that this is the right action to take.” Thanks to such an algorithm, actuators will become more efficient, more reliable and the intelligence of the system will allow them to be developed for new applications.

From research to industrial constraints

Before this can be achieved, predictive control must be mastered. This is why EFI turned to Leti, a CEA laboratory: “Leti has experts in predictive control with researchers who work only on this subject”, continues Vincent Liébart, “the idea is to work together to apply research work to the development of an industrial product with all the constraints that this implies.” Minimum space requirement, reduced cost, reliability, volumes… the constraints related to the industry in general and the automotive industry in particular, are not lacking and the site is immense. “To meet these constraints, we had to redo the coding of the algorithm from almost zero,” continues Vincent Liébart, “especially since we wanted to develop an extremely fast, reliable and accurate calculation core, and at the same time, sufficiently standardized so that it could be easily used in various applications.”

The major challenge: mastering the algorithm

The coding of this core therefore represents the first major step in this project, which began in the spring of 2018 and is expected to take at least another six months of work. “Before running an actuator, we need to ensure that this core will do the right calculations,” explains Vincent Liébart, “we will then move on to the second phase of the project, which will consist of verifying it in real conditions by integrating this core into our actuator control software architecture.” For EFI Automotive, the major challenge is to perfectly master the algorithm in order to adapt it to various applications. The so-called “smart” technology, based on the integration of control electronics into mechatronic systems, opens up new opportunities for the group in the actuator market. “With the development of hybrid or electric vehicles, more and more functions in the automotive industry are electrified,” emphasizes Vincent Liébart, “and for this to happen, we need ever more efficient and advanced actuators.” It is through research and development projects, such as this one with the CEA, that EFI Automotive stays one step ahead of its competitors and will be able to better meet the future expectations of its customers if the group has anticipated their needs.