Abstract
This research, which is an expanded version of a paper presented at the XVII SIMPOI - Symposium of Production Management, Logistics and International Operations, purported to discuss the concepts of mass customization in the automotive industry and how the use of lean principles in product development enables a profitable Design and Production customization. The results of a case study performed at an automaker plant in southern Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil, proved the efficiency of the company practice to develop simultaneously multiple concepts for each mechanism or Project detail, with substantial increase in design reliability, reducing redesign, cost, and development time, although cultural barriers were found.DOI: 10.12660/joscmv7n2p124-139URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.12660/joscmv7n2p124-139
Highlights
In the last decades, worldwide market changes imposed unprecedented pressure over companies, coining new challenges to them in a fierce competition environment (Scala, Purdy, & Safayeni, 2006)
This paper explored the concept of the Set-based Concurrent Engineering (SBCE) in the product development process (PDP) for automotive projects, enabling the company to the mass customization, but its full implementation faces barriers imposed by PDP technical and even managerial people
Unlike the PDP practices commonly used, in which one seeks to identify as early as possible the design concepts, so that they can be frozen, usually as a project maturity metric, this paper asserts that the development of multiple concepts and consequential decision delay leads to considerable project development gains, substantially increasing the chance of success and allowing time and cost reductions
Summary
Worldwide market changes imposed unprecedented pressure over companies, coining new challenges to them in a fierce competition environment (Scala, Purdy, & Safayeni, 2006). By creating customer-producer links, companies can prevent competitors from getting part their market share (Alvan & Aydin, 2009, Rocha, Delamaro, & Affonso, 2012) It makes the product development process (PDP) a critical success factor for companies (Rocha & Delamaro, 2012). Magar, and Roberts (2014) highlight that companies are struggling with a decrease in loyalty after the recession and eager to avoid a painful race to the bottom of the cost curve in globalized and standardized product arenas In this scenario, companies face a dilemma: how to play safe, developing new products, fulfilling customer ever-changing requirements (sometimes unique requirements) and remain attractive to customers, profitable, and competitive at same time?. At the Section “Conclusions and Remarks”, findings are assessed and discussed, while proposals for additional researches are made
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