Current state of the art on repair, maintenance and serviceability in Swedish automotive industry – a virtual product realization approach

Abstract

Sustainability with its three aspects, economy, ecology and social, is gaining more and more attention in industry as well as in academia. One way of increasing sustainability is to increase the life length of a product as well as ensuring performance by making it easy to maintain and repair. The consumer trends are moving towards a more positive attitude to buy a function rather than the product itself. By having this approach aspect such as maintenance, service and repair (MSR) is put in a different light. This paper presents a interview study with the intention to investigate the state of the art regarding maintenance and repair in four different Swedish automotive manufacturing companies with emphasis on how virtual product realization is considered and implemented. It was stated during the interviews that the use of simulation and analysis methods with emphasis on MSR differs and that it sometimes can be troublesome to make impact in project discussions etc. due to their difficulty in delivering hard figures e.g. cost, weight, CO2 emissions etc.