Case Study: Funai Electric achieves faster, lower-cost product development with Hexagon SC/Tetra

Thermal analysis tool enables low-cost, fast-to-market product development and manufacturing

Funai Electric Co., a Japanese consumer electronics manufacturer, faced intense market pressure to develop low-cost, high-quality products quickly. Their challenge was a time-consuming and inefficient product development process, especially for devices like projectors and DVD players that generated significant heat. The company needed a thermal analysis solution to replace their reliance on physical prototypes and estimations, which hindered fundamental design improvements and faster time-to-market. They turned to vendor Hexagon for a solution using their SC/Tetra CFD software.

Hexagon's SC/Tetra solution, particularly its HPC solver for parallel computing, enabled Funai Electric to perform highly detailed thermal and fluid flow analyses. This allowed engineers to visualize internal conditions, evaluate multiple design concepts early in the development process, and identify optimal cooling solutions. As a result, Hexagon helped Funai Electric successfully eliminate a cooling fan from a DVD player design, reducing both cost and noise. The company significantly cut development time, with one project taking less than six months, and reduced the need for numerous physical prototypes.

Funai Electric Co