Team Penske Streamlines Car Builds with Mendix and Teamcenter

Team Penske is a household name in the racing world with 636 wins and 44 National Championships over 58 years. “We have a pedigree of winning,” said Steven Abbey, PLM Business Analyst for Team Penske. “The way we do that is by prioritizing going fast over everything else.”

Speed isn’t just a priority on the racetrack. It’s a necessity in every facet of Team Penske’s business – from how they develop software to the work in their garages. Like many organizations, longstanding manual and Excel-based processes were slowing Team Penske down.

In 2023, Team Penske embarked on a journey to find a development platform that could move as fast as their cars on the track. They adopted the Mendix low-code platform and have since delivered an application that integrates with Teamcenter and serves as a single source of truth for engineers and shop floor employees during maintenance.

Pumping the Brakes on Spreadsheets

Getting the right cars and parts to the right places in a hectic racing environment hinges on a tremendous amount of data – and that data is always changing.

“We go racing every weekend, and things are changing all the time,” Abbey said. “We needed an easy way to change all those build specifications and make sure that the right parts are on the right car at the right time.”

Staying on top of these changes was challenging for Team Penske due to their:

• Reliance on spreadsheets, which offered limited and disjointed information, and made change tracking difficult as there was never a single source of truth.
• Information from Teamcenter existing in a silo, meaning shop floor users would have to track down engineers to gather additional part information.

“Right now, with the Excel way of doing it, it’s basically an Excel per season,” said Abbey.

“Looking at this situation we had a two-part problem. First with our bill of materials (BOMs) and then shop floor access,” he said. Separating these two challenges, the team quickly identified what needed to be done to remedy the lag in both areas:

• For their car build BOMs, they needed the ability to track and control builds, a data structure to represent builds outside of spreadsheets, a single source of truth, and the ability to easily change build specifications.
• For their shop floor users, they needed to provide access to build information (with access control parameters), and access to Teamcenter part numbers for easy ordering or changes.

A Winning Platform

Team Penske began exploring new additions to their IT landscape and evaluated Microsoft SharePoint, Teamcenter RAC, Teamcenter Active Workspace, and Mendix.

For Abbey, SharePoint fell short in providing the necessary connectivity and structure for the BOM, as well as the part details crucial for the shopfloor.

“It couldn’t help us build out our structure or continue our digital thread,” he said. “It just wasn’t in the right realm of what we’re doing. It might be the fastest and easiest solution to get something out to the users that they might use for a week or two. But they would go back to their Excel sheets. It wasn’t a long-term solution.”

While Teamcenter RAC offered the structured management required for the BOM, implementing it on the shopfloor would demand extensive user training. Similarly, Teamcenter Active Workspace alone lacked the flexibility and functionality Team Penske needed to streamline their operations.

Mendix emerged as the winner, standing out for its:

• User interface capabilities, which can be customized based on user roles, operate on mobile and desktop devices, and are flexible to enhance over time.
• Robust security features including single-sign-on and role-based permissions.
• Native integration with Teamcenter to manage BOM structures, with viewing capabilities and structured navigation.

With Mendix, Team Penske could streamline information delivery across various racetracks, effectively eliminating redundancy through Teamcenter’s structure manager, version control, and product configurator.

A low-code platform allowed Team Penske to get back to their top priority: speed. The team members took advantage of resources like the Mendix Academy to quickly become productive low-code developers.

While their first applications have been developed with the help of traditional developers, Team Penske can also enable team members who don’t have a traditional coding background to develop with Mendix. In the future, this will reduce the burden on the organization’s software developers – who were already spread thin – when change requests are needed.

Mendix developers at any skill level also have the benefit of leveraging pre-built and reusable components or services from the Mendix Marketplace. Features such as single sign-on, a Teamcenter connector, and a 3D viewer could be dragged and dropped into Team Penske’s new applications, instead of being developed from scratch.

Team Penske was able to deliver their first proof of concept with Mendix in just one week.

Streamlining Part Identification

With Team Penske’s new Mendix application, users are first guided through single sign-on where they are assigned username and role which informs their permissions. Once authenticated, the user is the directed to Teamcenter, where they gain access to the comprehensive Team Penske application. This way, shop floor employees don’t have to worry about remembering multiple passwords for multiple systems.

The admin page is the foundational structure inside of Mendix. Each line is their own BOM in Teamcenter, which are organized and surfaced in a way that is easy for users to consume.

“We don’t want to have too much information, or too little information,” said Abbey. “We want to give our users exactly what they need when they need it.”

“The way we designed that structure in Teamcenter was very specific and it’s to basically help the people that are assembling the car because typically they’re broken up into groups,” Abbey explained.

Once users are logged in, they are presented with lists of car build and race options. “That is where the shop floor teammates are going to live, to see if they are building for Daytona or Dover. That’s kind of their bread and butter. After that, once they make a selection, it goes to the next level and you’re actually inside the Teamcenter structure,” said Abbey.

The Teamcenter structure is designed to align to the specific user groups within Team Penske based on their part specialization, such as an engine or the suspension.

“We wanted them to be able to get all of the information in a simple fashion without having to train them extensively on how to use the system,” said Abbey. “If you’re looking for a suspension part, you know exactly which button to click.”

The “meat and potatoes” of the application is in the assembly viewing pane which contains the BOM substructures with multiple levels of colors and part types.

“In the past the Excel sheet would have been one line, and that’s all the information you would have had,” he said. “Sometimes it was enough – but a lot of times it wasn’t.”

The application also contains a properties panel, which is queried directly from Teamcenter, making it easy for mechanics to see exactly which part they are working with, without having to chase down the engineers.

The 3D viewer allows users to navigate the part structure from a 360 view.

In just two months, alongside deploying the application, Abbey’s team also successfully upgraded their Teamcenter environment from version 12.4 to 14.3. “That’s a huge undertaking in itself,” he said. “We were doing this transition in line with this, and we honestly didn’t have to change anything.”

Beyond the Finish Line

Looking ahead, Abbey outlined strategic plans to enhance operational efficiency through:

• Comprehensive process documentation
• Streamlined part ordering
• Efficient change request management

“Documentation is something that we want to make sure that we can do,” he said. “We think this Mendix application might be a good place for it to live and people to go find guidance for assemblies.”

Moreover, Team Penske aims to further streamline part ordering, transitioning from email-based orders to integrating directly with their ERP system. This transition promises significant advantages, particularly in the initial rollout phase.

Abbey also highlighted the anticipated efficiency gains from streamlining their change request process with the Mendix and Teamcenter integration.

“When it comes to a change request in Teamcenter, it’s two or three approvals out of the box, and that’s two or three more approvals than we typically have. Because our approvals are so fast, they’re usually one set of approvals. It’s very direct, and so we’re trying to get to the point of being efficient enough to be able to handle that. From a connector standpoint, the capability’s already there,” said Abbey.

In 2024, Team Penske will compete in the NTT INDYCAR SERIES and the NASCAR Cup Series. With new software to keep their engineers and shop floor team members working most efficiently, they are well-positioned to uphold their exceptional performance behind the scenes.