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.March 31, 2004
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Mazda To Invest Nearly 14 Billion Yen In New Digital Technology For Future Product Development
 

Aiming to further enhance engineering capability and create a vehicle development environment that allows engineers to maximize their creativity Mazda Motor Corporation announced today that, beginning in April 2004, it would commence the second stage of Mazda Digital Innovation (MDI). Called MDI-II, this stage will further boost the engineering efficiency of Mazda's product development system, while creating an environment that allows engineers engaged in new product development to maximize their creativity and further strengthen their capabilities. With MDI-II, Mazda will expand the engineering areas aided by digital technology in an effort to reduce the need to build and test costly prototype models. In order to support this initiative, Mazda will invest 13.9 billion yen (USD $126 million) during the next four years. This investment will be used to advance Mazda's virtual-testing capabilities, to purchase new super computers and provide for the development of associated software.

Launched in 1996, MDI-I brought a dramatic improvement to the engineering efficiency of the Mazda product development system-the development period of new Mazda products, which in some cases were as long as 27 months before the introduction of MDI, was cut to between 12 and 18 months. This improvement was realized by introducing concurrent engineering of new products with common digital data that is shared throughout the process, from design and technical engineering, to testing and production preparation. For some new products to be launched in FY2004, Mazda aims to complete the engineering process in 12 months.

MDI-II is part of Mazda's ongoing work to develop competitive, exciting products for global consumers in line with Mazda's brand strategy and enhance the company's long-term capabilities in the areas of both product development and manufacturing.

By utilizing advanced digital technology throughout the development process, Mazda will:

Further enhance the quality and speed of its product development process, while aiming to further improve efficiency.

Maximize engineers' capability and creativity, and establish a system that verifies on a computer the functional capability, the quality and the production process of a new product before the design drawings are finalized.

Critical goals of MDI-II:

Establish a system that allows all engineers in the product development system to share the latest engineering/manufacturing information and accelerate collaboration and concurrent engineering across divisions.

Introduce state-of-the-art parallel computation that will dramatically shorten Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) analysis time.

Introduce a "digital factory" for simulation of production preparation for all products.

Nearly double the amount of "virtual testing" performed during the development process, improving the ability to forecast collision performance, NVH levels, etc.

Introduce a "virtual reality system" to the design engineering process to present fresh ideas freely and quickly that can be seen on the computer and further studied.

Expand the use of testing equipment that accelerates concurrent engineering efforts-developing an engine and transmission at the same time, for example.

Establish an "automatic designing system" that promptly designs and tests new ideas.

Create a virtual engineering environment that conducts a significant amount of wide-ranging and often difficult product verification.

Further expand and maximize the use of testing equipment introduced during the first stage of MDI and more fully utilize the virtual engineering system that has been supported by Mazda-developed software.

(March 26, 2004)