AGCO Netherlands B.V. Wins PTC Design Award

AGCO Netherlands B.V. recently won a prestigious award for the design of its new Terra Gator 8333, launched at the Agritechnica show in November 2009. The award, organised by PTC (Parametric Technology Corporation), the supplier of engineering design software to the world’s leading manufacturers, is open to all users of the company’s Pro/ENGINEER software.

Held on a regional basis around the world, AGCO Netherlands BV’s engineering team took part in the BeNeLux (Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxemburg) competition.

Following the first round of judging by the PTC board and registered users, three finalists were nominated and invited to present their designs to a group of their peers from across the region. These presentations took place in November of this year at the annual PTC user conference, held in Duiven in the Netherlands.

All the finalists were given the opportunity to present their chosen design and explain in detail how the various PTC software packages were used to help in the design process.

After the presentations, the audience of professional engineers judged that the AGCO TerraGator 8333 design was the winner!

In particular, the judges were impressed by the AGCO team’s intelligent use of the software to create a “smart and precisely structured design”. Ultimately this resulted in a design that reduced manufacturing time but more importantly to our customers, it allowed a significantly more detailed study of the machine’s stress characteristics, which will result in greatly improve durability. Additionally, the 3-D design tool allows virtual proto-typing of all component assemblies, greatly enhancing the machine’s reliability and ease of maintenance.

For this design, AGCO Netherlands B.V. used Pro/ENGINEER, Large Assembly techniques-Cabling-Piping, Pro/PROCESS and Windchill PDMLink 9.0.

Ronald Wouters, Chief Engineer at AGCO Netherlands B.V. and René Broers, lead engineer of the TG 8333 project, were very pleased to be there to receive the award on behalf of the team. In addition to a trophy, now proudly on show at the factory in Grubbenvorst, the team were given a special 3D computer mouse and a cash prize. They were also treated to a thrilling ride in an F1 Powerboat.

“Our entry in the PTC awards competition was a truly collaborative effort, involving our whole engineering team”, stated Ronald Wouters. He continued “with Pro/ENGINEER and the recent AGCO implementation of Windchill, all users are now working with the latest data, thereby improving the precision of our designs. This award makes us very proud and is a real stimulation for us to further improve as we work on the many exciting projects ahead of us”. Source: AGCO Netherlands B.V. wins PTC Design Award | Challenger

What could a TerraGator 8333 help you achieve on your farm?