Business needWith virtual reality offering great

opportunities for businesses,

AW Engineering wanted to drive

the development of its virtual

manufacturing processes around

product design.

Solution

The company upgraded an existing

virtual desktop environment with a

Dell end-to-end solution, featuring

Dell PowerEdge servers, Dell

EqualLogic PS-Series storage arrays,

Dell Networking switches and Dell

Wyse endpoints.

Benefits• Drives innovation in virtual

manufacturing with greater IT

reliability

• Pushes maintenance costs

down by 50 percent with greater

performance by engineers

• Enhances personnel efficiency

with a cooler office environment

• Achieves business savings through

67 percent reduction in power use

• Creates room for future

expansion with VDI infrastructure

consolidated by 45 percent

Solutions at a glance• Cloud Client-Computing

• Data Center

The power of virtual reality becomes real in JapanLeading maker of automotive parts builds on success of virtual manufacturing with a desktop that cuts maintenance costs in half and lowers power use by 67 percent

Customer profile

Company AW Engineering

Industry Engineering

Country Japan

Employees 135

Website www.aw-e.co.jp

“We are also always looking to find ways to add value through developing new technologies. The Dell GPU-based VDI is very much in this vein. We feel that with this new VDI project, we have taken our simulator technology one step beyond where we were capable of going alone, as well as adding great value to what we do here.” Shigeyasu Kosaki, Executive Director, AW Engineering

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“ We were very happy to put our trust in Dell for this project, because we were able to confirm at the verification stage that the new solution would work fine with Argo Graphics. This gave us real peace of mind.” Takamasa Kamiya, Group Manager, Engineering Innovation Group, CAE Engineering Development Department, AW Engineering

AW Engineering (AW-E) in Japan is a leading manufacturer of automotive transition units in the world. It’s been at the cutting edge of automotive-related manufacturing since the company launched in 1987, and has developed a reputation for its computer-aided engineering (CAE). In recent years, AW-E has become known as a “non-manufacturing manufacturer,” using VR to design and develop products instead of building prototypes. Using simulators to create these products has helped the company tremendously. It’s reduced development times, helped enhance product quality, reduced costs and lowered input costs.

Looking to upgrade the existing desktop environmentTo assist the CAE program at AW-E, the company deployed a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). Engineers accessed CAE applications held centrally on servers containing two graphical processing units (GPUs). Each server supported two engineers. The problem for AW-E was that the VDI had no redundancy built in. Issues frequently occurred and downtime was a constant threat. At one point, the VDI environment suffered regular outages and the whole system would go offline several times a week, which caused significant disruption.

Finding an end-to-end solution providerTo ensure business continuity in the event of an outage, the company wanted to upgrade the VDI environment to the latest

technology and build in a high level of redundancy. Stakeholders began to assess the VDI market, and Takamasa Kamiya, Group Manager at the Engineering Innovation Group, part of the CAE Engineering Development Department at AW Engineering, attended a Dell seminar on Dell end-to-end VDI solutions. Kamiya and his colleagues began to compare VDI solutions. Dell quickly became the solution of choice, particularly after Dell provided demo units of key VDI solutions for AW Engineering personnel to assess. Around this time, stakeholders from AW-E also visited the Dell Solution Center in Tokyo to see a number of GPU-based VDI simulations. Dell partner Argo Graphics, which supported AW-E during the project, was also given access to the center’s laboratory to test the Dell technology.

When we think of virtual reality (VR) we often think of people

wearing goggles and immersing themselves in simulated,

lifelike environments. But VR is much more than that,

offering incredibly valuable ways for manufacturers to build

new products.

Products & Services

Hardware

Dell PowerEdge R720 servers with NVIDIA® K2 graphical processing units

Dell EqualLogic PS6210XS storage arrays

Dell Networking N4032 and N2024 switches

Dell Wyse Z90 thin clients

Partner

Citrix® XenDesktop®

Windows® Virtual Desktop Access (VDA)

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Yusuke Arai, a Team Leader and Technician in the Engineering Innovation Group, part of the CAE Engineering Development Department at AW Engineering, says, “When we were considering vendors, we felt we had a lot of requirements that would be difficult to fulfill, but Argo Graphics, through its partnership with Dell, was able to create an end-to-end environment for us in no time. We were very happy to find a vendor that could respond so quickly to our needs and come up with such a high-quality proposal.”

Kamiya says, “When we were working on selecting a solution, Dell made all the hardware available to us for verification purposes, as well as actually constructing the environment we required. We were very happy to put our trust in Dell for this project, because we were able to confirm at the verification stage that the new solution would work fine with Argo Graphics. This gave us real peace of mind.”

Deployment required collaboration from all parties involved. AW-E needed to test and migrate 20 different software CAE solutions over to the Dell VDI infrastructure. All applications had to be thoroughly tested on the upgraded environment before going live to avoid any production problems. Thanks to a good team, testing and deployment followed the schedule, and AW-E was able to stick to its two-phase implementation strategy.

A phased rollout, a scalable solutionPhase one of the strategy involved deploying the solution plus CAE software to a small number of personnel. The company plans to roll out the VDI across the remainder of the engineering design team in the coming months. For the VDI back end, AW-E deployed Dell PowerEdge R720 server technology with NVIDIA® K2 GPUs. Each server supports eight VDI servers running either Citrix® XenDesktop® or Windows® Virtual Desktop Access (VDA).

For storage, the company installed Dell EqualLogic PS6210XS storage arrays for fast access to data and Dell Networking N4032 and N2024 switches. The Dell Networking N4032 non-blocking switches deliver 10 to 40 gigabit Ethernet (GbE) data speeds out to the network, while the Dell Networking N2024 switches support the network edge, delivering 1GbE connections to desktops and for easy scalability. On the front end, AW-E installed Dell Wyse Z90 thin clients to deliver a powerful desktop. The endpoints feature quad-core AMD G-series accelerated processing units (APUs) to deliver high-end graphics to support the engineers’ CAE applications.

Empowered VR-based manufacturing with greater IT reliabilityToday, AW-E is using the Dell-based VDI solution to drive its use of VR in manufacturing. The VDI environment is more stable and better performing than before, giving engineers the tools they need to develop new products faster and more cost-effectively. The company has seen a decrease in issues compared with the previous VDI solution, and the Dell solution has freed IT personnel from regularly tackling system outages.

With several layers of redundancy built into the Dell VDI environment, the risk of system downtime is greatly reduced. Arai says, “The infrastructure is much more advanced, and as a result, there are virtually no issues with this new system to date. Work efficiency is up, and operational maintenance has become much simpler. At this point we have not implemented a product-by-product performance review, but in terms of system stability, our incident rates are very low, which is really good news.”

Staff performance increases while maintenance costs go down by 50 percentPersonnel report high rates of satisfaction with the deployment of Dell Wyse Z90 thin clients as endpoints.

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Besides excellent performance, staff have reported how simple the devices are to manage. A single administrator is responsible for overseeing all endpoints, cutting management costs in half compared to the previous solution.

Enhanced efficiency with cooler office spaceStaff say they are more productive because the office environment is noticeably cooler than in the past. With the old VDI in place, the office temperature could rise to over 30°C in the summer because of heat generated by the old workstations, despite the air conditioning being set at 28°C. Now the office temperature even during the hottest period of the year is a significant 2.2°C cooler through the use of the Dell Wyse clients, making it a much more pleasant place to work.

Major saving with power consumption down by 67 percentAW-E has seen important reductions in power usage since moving to the Dell-based VDI. The power savings have lowered costs and helped the company meet its commitment to cutting its carbon footprint. Both the energy efficiency of the endpoints and the back-end server, storage and networking technology have enabled AW-E to reduce power consumption by 67 percent.

Freeing space for future expansion with hardware consolidated by 45 percentThe company is also better able to meet growth having increased the density of its VDI environment. The Dell solution uses less hardware to deliver greater performance and scaling is easier than for the previous VDI solution. In fact, the company calculates that it has consolidated hardware by 45 percent by switching to Dell, regaining space in the data center to expand the infrastructure moving forward if required.

Enabling continuous innovation among personnelAW-E is committed to developing its “non-manufacturing manufacturing” methodology through CAE. Plus, with Dell, the company can develop its CAE expertise further by giving personnel the tools to be at their creative best. Shigeyasu Kosaki, Executive Director of AW Engineering, says, “AW Engineering has built a reputation on developing simulation technology for auto components. We are also always looking to find ways to add value through developing new technologies. The Dell GPU-based VDI is very much in this vein. We feel that with this new VDI project, we have taken our simulator technology one step beyond where we were capable of going alone, as well as adding great value to what we do here.”

Dell, the Dell logo, PowerEdge, EqualLogic and Wyse are trademarks of Dell Inc. Other trademarks and trade names may be used in this document to refer to either the entities claiming the marks and names or their products. Dell disclaims any proprietary interest in the marks and names of others. Availability and terms of Dell Software, Solutions and Services vary by region. This case study is for informational purposes only. Dell makes no warranties—express or implied—in this case study. Reference Number: 10022531 © October 2015, Dell Inc. All Rights Reserved

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“ The infrastructure is much more advanced and as a result, there are virtually no issues with this new system to date. Work efficiency is up and operational maintenance has become much simpler.” Yusuke Arai, Team Leader and Technician, Engineering Innovation Group, CAE Engineering Development Department, AW Engineering