Founded in 1967, the Tong Yang Group is Taiwan’s leading supplier of automotive components with a wide range of products. They specialize in both exterior and interior components such as: grilles, front and rear bumpers, door trims, instrument panels, center consoles, door panels and much more. By supplying both OEM corporations and aftermarket suppliers, their 2011 global revenue has grown to more than $10 billion while employing 7,200 workers worldwide. Today, the Tong Yang Group is facing tough competition from auto part manufacturers in China and India, as well as the perpetual concern for lower costs products and services. In the past, the Tong Yang Group employed the traditional trial-and-error approach to injection molding, which was costly and time-consuming. While using the trial-and-error method, the Tong Yang Group was still expected to enhance developmental capacity to meet their customer’s high standards as well as stay ahead of their competition in both cost efficiency and part quality.

The OEM Business Group collaborates with well-known automotive manufacturers to evaluate the manufacturability of their part designs. Then, based on those modeled part designs and 3D numerical analyses, the Tong Yang Group can detect potential problems and offer solutions to prevent costly setbacks.

However, in order to remain competitive in an environment that requires high versatility at low volumes, auto manufacturers are trying to differentiate themselves from the competition by enhancing their vehicle’s appearance. Plastic parts such like bumpers, grilles, and aero kits are among the top priorities for appearance changes. These concerns drive the need for simulation software.

Their interior design department uses Moldex3D’s simulation analysis on their plastic parts to avoid visual flaws within the part. Since the appearance of interior and exterior parts is the key focus for most consumers, aesthetic quality is paramount. Moldex3D’s analysis can help predict the location of sink marks, weld lines, warpage and gaps, all of which would produce visually unacceptable, poor quality parts.

In 2000, the Tong Yang Group adopted Moldex3D’s injection molding CAE software to help improve their product development. With significant part quality improvements, the company soon widened its application range. Today, the Tong Yang Group owns 13 licenses of Moldex3D’s software, applying it to product designs, mold designs and outsourced vendors. Moldex3D’s software offers versatile solutions to multiple departments:

• Assisting designers to understand the relationship between part design, mold design, material properties, and molding parameters.
• Lowering development costs.
• Creating product and mold design benchmarks and building learning experiences.

Optimal mold design solutions can be achieved through Moldex3D’s analysis. The results can then be benchmarked and ready for cost evaluation and mold testing. Users can check whether or not the analysis results match real-world performance, and ultimately shorting mold testing time.

“CoreTech is more than an injection molding simulation software supplier. They truly understand the challenges facing the molding industry and can always provide us with real-time professional assistance,” said Jeff Chien, the director of manufacturing division of Tong Yang Group.

Through continuous design process improvement, Moldex3D can help reduce cycle time by an average of 21.7 seconds for parts such as bumpers. Other products also gain great reduction in cycle time as well. “Our company’s productivity has been enhanced by 21.28%, which largely increased our cost advantage. We will adopt simulation analysis among upstream design suppliers, paving the path to collaborative and optimized designs,” – Mr Chien.

a. Prediction on air trap location

b. Place ejector pin in advance before the mold opens for mold venting