Neodev

Haldex, a world-leading provider of sustainable braking systems and air suspension solutions in the automotive industry, also offers services to the manufacturers of the vehicles in question. We were entrusted with the task of modernizing and digitizing one of the calculation tools that Haldex uses for the approval of truck trailers (e.g., semitrailers).

Trailer Approval

In order to sell vehicles in the EU, they need to be approved, and a brake calculation demonstrating the vehicle’s braking performance must be included in the approval process. Haldex performs approximately 2000 brake calculations per year as part of its product offering to its customers.

When one of Haldex’s customers develops a new trailer design, they retrieve a form from Haldex’s website and fill in the specifications for the new vehicle, which they then submit to determine if their design meets EU requirements.

At the office in Landskrona, Haldex engineers receive these forms for calculation. They use a program to transfer the numbers from the form. The process involves certain design choices on Haldex’s side, and ultimately, the application produces a document with the required calculations for approval, which is then sent back to the customer.

“The tool used for brake calculations was developed about 25 years ago, and with today’s availability of software and online services, we realized that it could be improved to simplify the brake calculation process.”

• Fredrik Rennstam, Application & Technical Support at Haldex

The program requires many manual selections and does not provide support in the calculation process. It is easy to make mistakes, and making adjustments takes time. Additionally, there is a significant amount of manual work involved in interpreting design specifications and communicating back and forth with customers to obtain the correct information.

A Better Solution

Kristoffer Örndahl (Chief Engineer Mechatronics at Haldex) approached Neodev Studio to explore how we could improve the tool. The old program was written in Delphi in German and provided little guidance. After evaluation, we concluded that a completely new concept should be developed.

We quickly realized that a cloud-based solution that eliminates PDF forms and allows customers to fill in their design specifications using the service themselves was the way forward.

With that direction in mind, the solution began to take shape, and the focus became clear:

• User-friendly interface
• Interactive brake calculation with real-time feedback
• Simple user and rights management
• Clear project-based workflow from start to finish

The Process

A clickable prototype was developed in Figma with an accompanying component library based on Haldex’s new (at the time, unreleased) website. Simultaneously, work began on understanding the regulations for approval (UN ECE R13) and the required calculations, as well as dismantling the old application.

Throughout the project, we worked closely with Kristoffer Örndahl, Joakim Gripemark, André Wilt, and Fredrik Rennstam at Haldex to understand the calculation process, their requirements, and develop the conceptual design of the new system.

Thanks to a node-backend based on Nest and a frontend built with React, we were able to use TypeScript as a common language, allowing our developers to seamlessly switch between the frontend and backend. This enabled us to quickly deploy MVP versions that Haldex could test during the development process.

“The collaboration with Anders Lööf and his team has worked very well from start to finish. The Neodev team has impressively familiarized themselves with the complex regulation (UN ECE R13) that governs the requirements for brake performance…”

• Fredrik Rennstam, Application & Technical Support at Haldex

BrakeIT Online

“This is a thousand times smoother.”

• Fredrik Rennstam, Application & Technical Support at Haldex

Throughout the project, we worked iteratively on the design, incorporating feedback from Haldex. In the new service, both the calculators and customers have accounts in Microsoft Azure AD, allowing Haldex to manage roles and permissions in the same way they already do in Active Directory. This also opens up the possibility of granting calculation capabilities to specific customers (e.g., other Haldex offices worldwide or customers with expert knowledge).

Instead of downloading a PDF and filling it out, customers now receive a login to BrakeIT Online, where they can start a new project and track it throughout the process. They are notified when the calculations are complete and can download a PDF with the required calculations for approval, generated by our backend.

Haldex engineers pick up the projects in the web interface and see in real-time the impact their adjustments have on the approval process through various graphs and visualizations of the requirements being met or not. When the design meets the requirements, they lock the project, the report is generated, and the customer is notified.

“A great example of the benefits of the new tool is from last summer when Joakim and I had to interrupt our vacation to perform a large number of brake calculations for one of Haldex’s customers. The time it took with the new tool meant that after a short but intensive effort, we could return to our vacation.

With the old tool, solving the task would have required significantly more vacation days!”

• Fredrik Rennstam, Application & Technical Support at Haldex