Customer-oriented digital design process for the development and production of an individual last-mile electric vehicle

Abstract

The current increase in road traffic in cities requires innovative, low-emission and flexible solutions for passenger transport on short distances. The main topic of this paper is a customer-oriented digital design process of a self-balanced scooter, which can be used as an individual last-mile means of transport between for example public means of transport and the workplace. Today, individual customer requirements (such as weight, range and cost) still present a major challenge in product development and production planning. Through cross-domain modelling, these requirements can be mapped throughout the entire design process. To create a digital and executable process, the individual steps are defined and domain specific data, such as product design, geometry creation, drive design and production planning need to be stored in a central data model, because only by using this approach a completely consistent and error-free data exchange between the domains is possible. The digital modelling process includes the input from the customer via a graphical user interface, the geometry creation of all components, the production planning, an additive production of the frame, the final assembly and the cost calculation. In addition, the product complexity can be reduced by centralizing the model information and the variety of variants during product development and the following process steps can be mastered and represented. The integration of production planning and cost modelling allows to directly derive the product price, the production time and the delivery time of the self-balanced scooters from the digital design process model. A further research goal is to develop the model-based integration of the different domains of the product life cycle and thus to investigate the digital design process. This means that the entire design process accelerates and robust and congruent planning results can be achieved. These results can be evaluated based on different domain-specific key figures.