Royal Enfield to Improve Motorcycles through Human-Centric Design
The world’s oldest motorcycle manufacturer and producer of the longest-lived motorcycle design in history, Royal Enfield, a unit of Eicher Motors Ltd., is adding the use of SantosHuman Inc.’s predictive digital human models to their design processes.
“We started working with Royal Enfield in 2019, when the focus was on hand-operated switch gear,” said Steve Beck, CEO of SantosHuman Inc. “We are now helping them broaden the use of Santos Pro to include designing for a variety of critical motorcycle rider tasks.”
“Our design and engineering teams are endeavoring to make Royal Enfield bikes the most human friendly motorcycles available and the most suitable for all our customers’ comfort and performance,” said Adrian Marshall, Computer-Aided Design Manager, Royal Enfield. “We also wanted to help provide the additional ability to reduce post-concept rider-centric design changes and provide additional confidence to project gate decisions using advanced simulation. That means we explore tools that enable designing for the rider from the ground up and bring human factors into the design process earlier.”
According to Beck, “Most of the design tools in any OEM’s toolkit focus on manufacturability.” As a result, current product development processes must rely on mature designs to gauge how well products meet operator requirements. The physical prototypes required for these types of evaluations are often not available until after production begins.
Royal Enfield serves one of the largest motorcycle markets in the world, which means their daily production numbers are staggering. Having the improved ability to identify and rectify any potential human-centric design issues well ahead of prototype and final production provides the opportunity to avoid late changes and save on overall development costs.
“Market acceptance issues can occur in any consumer product, and that information is useful to have sooner rather than later. Santos® Pro provides fast-forward market acceptance litmus tests that fit nicely within any stage of existing design processes,” said Beck.
“We were looking for software that was easy enough to use that it could be adopted quickly. We also sought a partner like SantosHuman Inc. with great support mechanisms and highly skilled support staff who can ensure the simulation projects run smoothly,” says Marshall.
“We’re excited for this opportunity to partner with Royal Enfield as they move their already popular motorcycle designs to the next level of competitive advantage,” said Beck.
For more information about using predictive human behavior models to evaluate designs, read this post on precision grasps.