Onida was founded in 1981 and by 1982 the company had started assembling television sets at its own factory. Superior products backed up by distinctive design, cutting-edge advertising and purposeful marketing made Onida a household name in India. In addition to televisions, the company has recently made a foray into other household appliances, including air-conditioners, washing machines, DVDs and home theatre systems. For business and industry, Onida has introduced state-of-theart multimedia presentation products. The company has a network of 33 branch offices, 208 customer relation centers and 41 depots across India.

To meet these challenges, Onida decided to upgrade to 3D design. The company had a number of criteria for choosing the new software. It needed to be easy to use, support both electronic and mechanical assemblies, offer good surface creation functionality, and foster a team approach to design. After evaluating a number of options, Onida chose NX™ digital product development software and I-deas® design software, both from Siemens PLM Software. In addition to meeting the technical requirements, the company found this solution to be cost-effective.

The Siemens distributor, Solid Vision, provided training for both programs. Onida appreciates the ease of use of Siemens technology, which makes it possible for relatively new engineers to work productively after a short period of time. Another benefit of the Siemens technology is that it is open to future enhancements. After implementing the two design programs, Onida added the Siemens simulation product, Femap® with NX Nastran. The company is planning to implement the industrial design application, NX Shape Studio, in the future to further improve its virtual product development capabilities.

The new software has improved both the design and validation processes. For example, the number of engineering change cycles has declined from four or five to one or two. And the number of review cycles has dropped dramatically – from five to two. One round of prototyping has been eliminated. Also, interactions with mold makers have improved since most of those companies also use NX. The number of mold iterations has been reduced from four to three.

Since implementing the Siemens software, Onida has been able to introduce new products to market 25 percent faster than previously. More importantly, the company is able to introduce seven to eight new models each year, compared to two or three in the past. The company has also been able to make its products more compact, in keeping with global design trends. Even though the products are more compact, the designs are more accurate.

In the long term, Onida expects to see a 50-percent reduction in the design cycle and for mold development to be reduced by one month. Eventually the company will have a complete digital product development studio, with the entire design process done digitally, from aesthetic modeling in NX Shape Studio to simulation and validation in Femap with NX Nastran. Onida is also evaluating Siemens’ Synchronous Technology. The company is confident that with the training and support it gets from Siemens and Solid Vision, it will be able to readily bring these plans to fruition.