A partnership between Navistar and Mentor, a Siemens business, to significantly improved service to Navistar customers using advanced technology from Mentor’s Capital software suite was announced Monday.
Mentor says Capital is a powerful electrical systems software environment spanning vehicle architecture, systems design and integration, service documentation creation, and wire harness manufacturing tools. The technology now adopted by Navistar significantly speeds electrical system fault diagnosis, delivering lower maintenance costs and maximizing vehicle availability.
As the complexity of onboard electrical and electronic systems increases, so does the task of rapidly identifying and diagnosing system faults. Navistar now uses Capital Publisher, part of the Capital tool suite, to not only automate creation of technical documentation but also provide a highly interactive environment for service technicians, Mentor says.
“We are always looking for ways to provide a better service experience to our customers. Commercial vehicles are valuable, hard-working assets, so everything that maximizes their uptime is important,” saysDominic Venice, service information manager at Navistar. “By deploying Mentor’s technology to our dealership network, we have taken a major step forward in customer service capabilities.”
Dominic adds Navistar’s dealership network is already starting to realize the benefits of these enhanced schematics.
Fully integrated with diagnostics systems, Mentor says Capital Publisher is able to display and seamlessly link assets such as wiring schematics, connector location views, component locations, and truck harness views. Technicians can explore intelligent electrical schematics, generated dynamically for the specific vehicle configuration in question. Mentor says these interactive data packages can be hosted from a website or delivered offline to portable devices such as tablet computers, making them suitable for both commercial and military applications.
“Navistar builds highly configurable trucks to meet our customers’ needs. Mentor’s fully integrated schematics allow our dealerships to quickly find and understand the complex electrical system required for custom trucks. With this first release of integrated schematics to support our new LT platform, we have just started to utilize the potential of this new technology,” says Scott Sine, project manager for Smart Client at Navistar.
Nick Smith, business development director at Mentor, adds, “Navistar has used Capital tools for electrical system and wire harness design for several years. I am delighted Navistar has now expanded its Capital deployment into after-sales applications. I very much appreciate the vision this company exhibits, especially in terms of maximizing end-customer satisfaction and extending the duty cycle of their vehicles. The technology we provide clearly helps keep Navistar at the forefront of its industry.”
