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Case Study Philips Medical Page 1 of 3

Philips Medical GmbH Exceeds Production &

Design Goals Using CoCreate Solutions ®

Maker of Instruments that Monitor Intensive Care Patients Cuts Development Time by 50%,
Using 50% Less Personnel

Philips Medical GmbH, Böblingen, Germany

Philips Medical designs and manufactures products used for monitor-
ing patients in intensive care. The company’s instruments can monitor
up to 20 parameters simultaneously, such as blood pressure, oxygen
saturation in the blood, and ECG (electro-cardiagram) curves. These
products not only display, store and interpret such data, but some
instruments will recommend diagnoses for certain combinations of
values. Philips’ monitors can also be connected to a network of clinics,
either wirelessly or via LAN, for centralized data acquisition.

In Böblingen, Philips Medical employs nearly 700 people, covering the

entire manufacturing process chain, from marketing to development,
design and production. All Philips instruments are manufactured at a
single location, from start to finish, although some components, such
as the plastic-injection molded housings, are purchased from suppliers.
The Challenge: Greater Flexibility in Design,
More Efficiency in Production
As a manufacturing company in a highly competitive market, Philips
Medical needs to design, manufacture and deliver its complex, high-
quality products quickly. To achieve its goals, the company wanted
greater design flexibility in organizing and assigning projects within
their small mechanical design department, whose employees interact
closely with electronics and software developers. The company real-
ized it needed a flexible, easy-to-use 3D modeling solution that could
enable fast, efficient, production- and assembly-friendly design, so
as to reduce – or eliminate – costly changes required by injection
mold-makers.
Medical personnel use the latest Philips Medical life-saving equipment.
Results: Same Production, but in Half the Time, with Half
the Personnel
Using this combination of CoCreate and Mentor Graphics solutions,
Philips Medical has achieved impressive results, managing the same
workload, yet with a 50% shorter development phase and 50% fewer
personnel. As well, the company has maintained its profitable assembly
and production operations in Germany, despite having to deal with high
wages. Best of all, the company has raised the bar on designing high-
quality, robust and easy-to-use instruments for everyday clinical use –
products that are helping save lives in hospitals and clinics worldwide.

The Solution: PTC’s CoCreate Explicit Modeling,

with Mentor Graphics ® Tools “W hen one sees what we have accomplished
Philips Medical found a complete 3D design solution with CoCreate here in such a short time, it is amazing.
Modeling, PTC’s explicit modeling solution that enables designers to
make unlimited changes to models ‘on the fly.’ CoCreate is so intuitive Within the past ten years, we have been able
and easy to learn that any designer can pick up the work of another to cut our time and personnel requirements
designer and ‘run with it,’ just like writers can open and edit another
author’s MS Word® document. Using a variety of CoCreate tools for in half – with the same output.”
Annotation, Drafting, Sheet Metal, and Finite Element Analysis – along – Jörg Zwirner, Department Manager
with CoCreate Model Manager ™ for Product Data Management– Philips Philips Medical Böblingen GmbH
now has a powerful and complete 3D modeling portfolio that is ideal
for both novices and power users. To complement the CoCreate solu-
tion, Philips added a self-programmed interface package for electronic
development, and a temperature analysis tool (FloTHERM®), both from
Mentor Graphics.
Case Study Philips Medical Page 2 of 3

Highly Complex Design Work Requires

Powerful Design Tools
To deliver high quality products on time and within budget, Philips
Medical’s industrial designers and mechanical engineers must work
very closely – and very efficiently. Their common design requirements
include not only the plastic housing and inner metal framework for
mounting electronic components, but also the development of pneu-
matic systems – such as a small integrated compressor for measuring
blood pressure. Further challenges include cooperatively designing and
manufacturing gas-flow control systems, optical wave guides, and sys-
tems for connecting the instruments to sensors on the patient.

“Our models are becoming more and more complex because we are
increasingly working with integral construction housings,” says Jörg
Zwirner, department manager at Philips Medical. “That means we inte-
grate mounting devices in the housing to facilitate assembly. We have
to implement clever designs to compensate for the high personnel costs
for assembly in Germany – which we achieve very well. Meanwhile, it
takes nearly as long to install the software and test the instrument as it Philips Medical devices – designed with CoCreate software – can monitor up to 20
does to assemble it,” states Zwirner. individual parameters for patients in intensive care.

These plastic parts are highly complex; an industrial designer develops

the outer form – using CoCreate Modeling – and provides the mechani-
cal designers with a shaped block. They hollow out the block, determine
the installation space required inside an instrument, and integrate the
intricate inside mounts.
“With CoCreate explicit modeling, we have much more freedom in
adapting the inside of the housing, without changing the free-form
surfaces on the outside,” says project director, Thomas Kühnel. “We
also place importance on fast assembly of the metal frame inside, so the
instruments can usually be assembled in one position, without having
to turn them over.”
For PCB (printed circuit board) development, Philips’ designers devel-
oped a very stringent work process, which enables close and trouble-
free cooperation between the Electronics and Mechanical Development
Departments. Zwirner explains: “We are the ‘guardians of the instal-
lation space’, which means that the Electronics Department gives us
general shapes and surfaces that symbolize the required space. We use
this information in coordination with the industrial designer to define
the spatial location of the various elements,” states Zwirner.
Because the PCB’s contours and height restrictions are now defined
more clearly, the Electronics Department can use Mentor software
(Mentor Graphics Corp.) to develop PCB layouts.

“We have defined a fixed process that ensures that the data can be
mirrored back and forth via our self-programmed PCB interface,” says
Kühnel. “This solution even gives us 3D models of the PCBs, which we
can then use to optimize the positioning and to analyze the flow of the
cooling air.”

For Philips Medical employees, working closely as a single, internal

development team definitely has its challenges and rewards. “We
develop our components ourselves, from start to finish,” explains
Zwirner, “and we achieve a very high design maturity. That means
that the mold-maker hardly ever has to make changes to our parts.
This is very important, because a subsequent draft angle on the deep
rear part of the housing would drastically affect the design. Such
things have to be calculated from the very start, but we have very
competent employees who are familiar enough with the various pro-
duction methods, that their designs are nearly ready for production,”
says Zwirner.

Using CoCreate Modeling software, Philips designers can easily adapt the inside
of the equipment’s housing, without changing the free-form surfaces on the outside.
Case Study Philips Medical Page 3 of 3

Zwirner talks about the everyday reality of mechanical design: “We

are a small outfit, and we consistently employ trainees and students.
We also have engineers who work here part-time during peak periods.
It is noteworthy that the trainees can work very well with CoCreate
Modeling after two weeks – it is that easy to learn to use the program.
Even more important for me, as the department manager, however, is
flexibility in the distribution of resources. Thanks to CoCreate’s explicit
modeling, a design engineer can use a colleague’s model almost seam-
lessly. This makes it easy to deal with vacations, illness and changing
requirements in projects, since I can regroup the employees just about
any way I want,” says Zwirner.

Kühnel explains that CoCreate Model Manager, a powerful data admin-

istration tool, is also important in this context: “The clean versioning
featured in CoCreate Model Manager makes it easy to transfer models.
Also, it makes it possible to reuse many more parts; they only have to be
stored once for fast retrieval. It is even possible to open models that are
ten years old and easily adapt them to new designs. Since our instru-
ments have a very long service life, upgrades and optimizations, after
such long periods, are not uncommon,” states Kühnel.

With only about a dozen employees working in each department, it is

nearly impossible to operate an additional legacy system. Kühnel also
makes positive reference to the STL interface: “It makes it possible to
quickly produce prototype parts, which we use for many tests.”

Jörg Zwirner adds: “Our models are highly complex. Free-form surfaces
outside and diverse forms inside for the integral construction – as well
as draft angles, cast radiuses and other production features – can take
many systems to their limit. What we find outstanding about CoCreate
Modeling is its user-friendliness and freedom in modeling. And, as
already mentioned, the flexibility in personnel assignments offered by
CoCreate – we are absolutely certain that we are using the right system.

“When one sees what we have accomplished here in such a short time,
it is amazing. Within the past ten years we have been able to cut
our time and personnel requirements in half – with the same output,”
concludes Zwirner.

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