Pheon Auto Tech

When Pheon Auto Tech (Pheon) opened its doors in 1964, it supplied a small number of local clients with just a single product: a simple direct-acting mechanical-electrical switch designed to convert a physical action like a button press into an electrical signal that controls off-highway vehicles such as agricultural machinery and construction equipment.

Today – more than 60 years later – the company has evolved into a global operation. “We now have five divisions and collectively produce over 3,500 products which are exported to more than 30 countries,” said Raman Malik, Pheon’s managing director. “Our client base includes large original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), Tier 1 suppliers and aftermarket distributors – so we cover all segments of the automotive industry.”

Despite its substantial growth, Pheon has remained true to its roots. It still operates exclusively in the off‑highway sector and specializes in that very same product it built its business on: direct‑acting mechanical-electrical switches. “We’ve consciously built a product portfolio based on close collaboration with customers – understanding their needs, maximizing the number of switches we can supply for each vehicle and becoming a one-stop-shop so that customers don’t need to source different switches from multiple suppliers,” Malik said. “This collaborative approach – listening carefully and developing tailored products – really sets us apart in the market.”

But this is just a waypoint in Pheon’s journey. Over the next five years, it wants to evolve from a single‑component supplier into a full systems and solutions provider for its customers – a move that will require the company to scale significantly. To support this growth and help it win profitable business, it chose to complement its existing SOLIDWORKS design environment with Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE platform on the cloud, including ENOVIA capabilities for enhanced project management, product development and change management. 

Pheon’s choice to embrace the capabilities of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform was a strategic one. It found that coordinating internally across five distinct divisions, each with different technologies and manufacturing processes, brought a high level of complexity in terms of project coordination, version control and legacy data management. Fragmented workflows – with information spread across emails, spreadsheets and local servers – led to inefficiencies, delayed customer responses and operational friction.

“We needed a system that could both manage our legacy data and expand our capabilities,” Malik said. “Our primary drivers were scalability and flexibility – we needed a solution that could integrate with our existing engineering systems and enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. And it must evolve alongside us.”

Pheon had already partnered with Dassault Systèmes for about ten years, initially using SOLIDWORKS for engineering. “After evaluating its solutions portfolio further, we felt confident that ENOVIA – delivered through the 3DEXPERIENCE platform on the cloud – would help us evolve into a more technically mature organization,” Malik said.

EDS Technologies, a Dassault Systèmes business partner, played an important role in the implementation and has continued to provide ongoing support. “EDS has been amazing,” Malik said. “It has been a responsive, insightful partner – not just a vendor. It has helped us to predict our future software needs so that we can be prepared for what’s next.”

Opting for a cloud-based setup gave Pheon the ability to scale quickly, without long lead times. “We saw the cloud as a major advantage,” Malik said. “It allows us to move at our own pace, without being dependent on heavy infrastructure or additional third-party vendors for IT support.” 

By deploying Dassault Systèmes’ Bid to Win industry solution experience (ISE) – a preconfigured industry-specific solution designed to help organizations win optimal new business – Pheon has transformed the end-to-end development cycle, from the initial customer inquiry through to engineering, validation and delivery.

Pheon’s transformation has revolved around streamlining three core areas: program and project management, to improve coordination and visibility across divisions; product development, to expedite the delivery of new switch variants; and change management, to ensure all product modifications are fully tracked and controlled.

By leveraging ENOVIA’s project and program management capabilities, for example, Pheon has established a centralized data repository from which its various teams – spread across multiple divisions – can keep track of all project timelines and deliverables resulting in straightforward business processes.

“Real-time collaboration has become much smoother, with less friction and better accountability,” Malik said. “Moreover, we’ve seen a 15–20% reduction in project timelines and vastly improved response times to customers. Some customers have noticed and even asked us what changes we’ve made to improve our communication and responsiveness.” 

Pheon develops multiple variants of its products using reverse engineering. By closely integrating its SOLIDWORKS designs with ENOVIA’s data management capabilities on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, it can synchronize design updates, enabling faster iterations.

“Now all legacy product information is located in a single, cloud-based repository, enabling our engineers to work more efficiently and reducing development cycle times for new variants,” Malik said.

Pheon is not only optimizing this data access internally, but also using it to enhance customer interactions. “Customers often ask us how a specific product will perform in a given use case,” Malik said. “To answer these questions, we have a lot of testing data that we can refer to, but finding it was always a challenge because it wasn’t organized in a logical way. Now we can centralize it using ENOVIA and respond to customer queries faster.”

Having a single, centralized source of truth has also improved change and release management. Previously, engineers managed their own bill of materials (BOMs) and drawings locally, making version control error-prone. Today, with ENOVIA, BOM and drawing versioning are fully automated and traceable – reducing risk and reclaiming hours of engineering time.

“A customer might return after five years expecting the same product,” Malik said. “Previously, we had to dig through spreadsheets and servers to retrieve legacy BOMs or drawings.”

ENOVIA’s tagging system, which categorizes and filters product data based on who, what, when, where, why and how, means that Pheon’s engineers can now quickly and easily retrieve the information they need.

As Pheon looks to expand its use of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform on the cloud, it expects version control will become easier. “The next step in our implementation is version management, where we plan to integrate ENOVIA with SOLIDWORKS and our ERP system,” Malik said. “This will ensure seamless data flow from CAD systems to product lifecycle management (PLM) and finally to ERP, with precise control over versions and documentation” 

In the next five years, Pheon believes the off-highway industry will evolve considerably.

“In the industry we operate in, as well as in the broader component sector, there’s a great deal of innovation and disruption taking place – the electrification of tractors being just one example,” Malik said. “We see this not just as a challenge, it’s an opportunity.”

Through its use of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform on the cloud, Pheon believes it is well positioned to navigate the industry’s transformation strategically and with ease. “With a strong partner like Dassault Systèmes, we have well-organized data and robust engineering processes, which puts us in a great position to harness new emerging technologies and come up with new products,” Malik said.

Malik is particularly excited about the potential of generative intelligence. “Dassault’s upcoming Companion AI solution, for example, is something we are keen to explore,” he said. “I’m looking forward to seeing how our ongoing collaboration will shape the future of our company.