Design Method of Under-body Platform Automotive Framing Systems

Abstract

OEMs across the globe are moving to reduce the number of their platform by 50% and to focus more on selected platforms to be used to design and produce different vehicles across segments and brands on a global scale (by size and price range) [1]. OEMs focused on platform sharing and standardization to rationalize their product development and production costs, besides significantly reducing the product-conception-to- launch time. As platform development costs, account for nearly half of the cost product development, this strategy of using common engineering across vehicle models allows money as well as time savings. This research introduces new systematic framework and methods dealing with a complete end-to-end design process of the production system for under-body platform complete in body and white (BIW). This method helps product developer and systems engineer to plan modular development (product upgrades) and interface for both manufacturing and final assembly of production systems. This research introduces new tools such Hybrid Design Structure Matrix (HDSM) to help system designers to understand changes in product design and mapping to physical domains (production systems) and to evaluate the effect of changes by connecting the process to digital manufacturing (DM) simulation. The methods will introduce a new approach to vehicle production systems design and development of “underbody platform” (BIW) using modular assembly strategy.