The procedures and norms prescribe that each engineer responsible for a component should
release his or herCADfiles periodically (for most components the rhythm is a fortnight). There are 26 teams of engineers, whose team leaders are responsible for making sure their team-members release the CAD files on time. Typically, the delivery deadline is set a day or two before the virtual check is run (some transformation of the data has to take place, as the CAD system and the system used for the virtual checks are different and files have to be transferred into another format). In reality, updated CAD files are often not delivered on time. This triggers quite an intense activity on part of the packaging team, who remind engineers to release their files. Two formal measures can be taken in case updated CAD files are not released to the packaging team on time, depending on the cause of the delay. In case of hardware or software problems, often the cause of delays, the problem is addressed by IT people (neither the engineers nor the packaging people are much involved) but if a delayed release is related to delays in the engineers’ activities, no particular action is taken. No authorization for not releasing the updated files is required; not even a notice of the late release or lack of release needs to be made. Since there are no such requirements, the updated CAD files are often released late or not at all without any notice, preceded by an intense reminder activity on part of the packaging team.
3.4.2. Step #2: Creating a reference base of files for the packaging software
The second step consists of creating a homogenous reference (in terms of the state of the design) for purposes of the packaging check. To do so, (i) a point of time of reference has to be defined to which the designs of all components will be compared. The CAD files of all components are then (ii) transformed into files in the format of the packaging software, which results, in simple terms, in a ‘snap shot’ of the whole vehicle at that moment. Packaging check calculations will be run on this ‘object’. According to the procedures and norms, the person in charge of packaging should, after the point fixed as reference, download the CAD files from the product data management system (where all CAD files are kept centrally), identify the CAD files that correspond to the components of the vehicle (there might be more than one file per component, and several components to realize an assembly), and then upload them into the DMU software. The procedures also contain