Romansys

South Korea’s government has big plans to create a more sustainable rail infrastructure, setting ambitious targets to cut railway CO₂ emissions by 30% by 2029. To meet this goal, it requires a new generation of cleaner, more energy-efficient trains.

Stepping up to the challenge is Romansys, a local railway original equipment manufacturer (OEM) that secured a contract with South Korea’s national rail operator for the delivery of a fleet of state-of-the-art hybrid diesel-electric locomotives. This landmark project was more than just an order for Romansys: it marked the company’s impressive transformation from a components supplier into a full-system supplier capable of managing the design, engineering and delivery of complete vehicles.

Romansys could not deliver this project effectively with its existing way of working, which was optimized for component supply rather than managing complete railway transport systems. That’s why it adopted Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE platform, embracing best-in-class tools so it can fully manage all design and development processes in a single environment.

Romansys’s operations have historically involved the supply of components and turnkey production for local train manufacturer Hyundai Rotem, collaborating on large railroad projects across the globe, including a second metro line in Cairo, Egypt, and a tram line in Edmonton, Canada.

The design of these projects was managed in CATIA, with Romansys then sharing data with Hyundai Rotem by e-mail, going back and forth with iterations until sign off. However, managing revisions in this way meant data was held in silos, making it incredibly difficult for engineers to know if they were working on the latest version of a design. The result? Frequent rework and production delays.

This way of working was costing Romansys valuable time and money. It realized that evolving into a company wholly responsible for producing and project managing complete railway vehicles required an entirely new level of capability. With more complex projects – particularly those involving full vehicle certification – comes a greater need for effective project and data management. This requires strong traceability, the consistent sharing of information across departments and effective collaboration across multiple teams. Romansys sought a platform that could provide it with these abilities. 

As an existing user of CATIA V5 for design, and having witnessed how Hyundai Rotem has improved the efficiency of its product development process using the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, Romansys was keen to leverage more capabilities from Dassault Systèmes. It called on local Dassault Systèmes business partner ISPARK for expert guidance on the technologies that could best meet its needs – specifically a unified environment where identical data could be shared and utilized across the entire value chain, from sales, design, procurement and production to quality, delivery and after-sales service.

With help from Dassault Systèmes, ISPARK came up with a proposal that convinced Romansys that the 3DEXPERIENCE platform was the right fit. The implementation would include CATIA for design and ENOVIA for project and product data management – and would be carried out in three phases. ISPARK guided Romansys throughout the entire journey, playing a critical role in training and offering ongoing support along the way.

The first phase of the implementation has now been completed, establishing a single digital thread throughout the product development process – from initial requirements to final verification.

Phase two of the 3DEXPERIENCE platform rollout will expand the technology’s use beyond product development to integrate company-wide processes in materials, procurement and production management. Romansys is also looking into the possibility of integrating DELMIA for full production process integration.

Phase three will integrate Romansys’s legacy systems, including its enterprise resource planning and workforce management system, to achieve a company-wide single source of truth. 

The first phase of the implementation has already delivered tremendous benefits.

Romansys can now manage the entire design and development process for its hybrid locomotive project in a single, unified environment. Engineers design in CATIA and then publish their work directly to the 3DEXPERIENCE platform. Using ENOVIA, they can then automatically generate an engineering bill of materials (EBOM) directly from the 3D designs. Since engineers no longer need to manually reconcile multiple spreadsheets, the time taken to create an EBOM has been reduced. Not only this, but there are fewer errors and greater consistency.

With all engineers having access to the same centralized repository of data, revision control is tighter. This not only improves design quality, but has minimized errors and cut rework. Engineering change lead times have also reduced. Collaboration has improved at the same time, expediting decision-making and accelerating workflows.

These combined benefits of ENOVIA have resulted in a mindset shift among engineers, who now recognize the importance of unified data, traceability and proper version control – critical for meeting stringent regulatory requirements.

“Implementing the 3DEXPERIENCE platform has ensured we have consistent information sharing across departments and established a far more collaborative working environment,” said Chul Su Son, a design team director at Romansys. “We’ve also achieved substantial time savings: time taken to create an EBOM has reduced by about 30%, errors and rework have reduced by 15% and engineering change lead times have reduced by 25%.” 

Romansys’s digital transformation to date means it is already positioned as a credible full-system railway vehicle OEM capable of handling large turnkey projects to help advance the country’s rail infrastructure development. But this is only the first stage of a bigger journey. Once it has progressed through all three stages of implementation, Romansys believes it will be perfectly positioned to meet its strategic goals for the future. These include scaling its production capacity, expanding the number of countries it exports to and shifting towards greener, smarter rail solutions such as electric vehicles, hydrogen power and digital maintenance and repair activities that can help tackle climate change.

Discover more about the Bid to Win industry solution experience.