Siemens has announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire the Noise, Vibration, and Harshness (NVH) end-of-line quality testing business of Saab Medav Technologies GmbH, a global provider of state of the art signal processing, communications intelligence and analysis for air, land and naval applications, as well as NVH solutions for industrial quality testing.

The unique NVH quality testing solutions offered by Saab Medav have a strong track record and have established innovative best practices in the domain of end-of-line quality testing of combustion engines, transmissions, electric motors and motor driven components and systems. The addition of Saab Medav NVH allows Siemens to complement its Simcenter portfolio of testing solutions used in research and development with an integrated solution set for end-of-line NVH quality testing in manufacturing. The technology and team will join the Siemens PLM Software business, part of the Siemens Digital Factory Division, and will be incorporated into the Simcenter portfolio of simulation and testing solutions.

With ever-increasing pressure on improving quality, the need for NVH type end-of-line testing for manufactured products such as electric motors, combustion engines, transmissions, axles, and turbo chargers is rapidly increasing across the automotive and transportation industries. This phenomenon is accelerated with the ascent of electric vehicles which have a low general noise level and are lacking the masking effect from a loud combustion engine.

“With the integration of Saab Medav NVH quality testing solutions, Siemens customers can gain the ability to enrich the digital twin of their product design with continuous quality control information from manufacturing. This provides unique insight in how production technology and variability in manufacturing lines influence the final product quality,” explains Jan Leuridan, senior vice president, simulation and test solutions, Siemens PLM Software. “The technology also gives direct feedback on the root cause analysis of possible design issues that appear in manufacturing and generates insight for possible intermediate redesigns. Creating a constant data feedback loop from manufacturing into product design and engineering also supports closing the loop on optimized requirements for future generation product designs.”

“Siemens is one of the market and technology leaders when it comes to NVH test-based engineering and simulation. The combination of the Siemens test-based engineering technologies with the end-of-line technology of Saab Medav will provide a strong basis for future innovation in both application areas,” said Olaf Strama, head of NVH department at Saab Medav. “We believe that as part of Siemens, our customers will benefit from an industry-leading development team of NVH testing technology and solutions, including an extensive portfolio of systems and software for data acquisition and smart data analytics. The global reach of Siemens can serve our customers in all key manufacturing areas worldwide, which will help us to strengthen our overall market position.”

The asset sale and purchase transaction is due for completion in the second calendar quarter of 2019. The parties have agreed not to disclose any details of the transaction.