Auto Manufacturers Research Articles

A Schedule Optimization Tool for Destructive and Non-Destructive Vehicle Tests

Whenever an auto manufacturer refreshes an existing car or truck model or builds a new one, the model will undergo hundreds if not thousands of tests before the factory line and tooling is finished and vehicle production beings. These tests are generally carried out on expensive, custom-made vehicles because the new factory lines for the model do not exist yet. The work presented in this paper describes how an existing intelligent scheduling software framework was modified to include domain-specific heuristics used in the vehicle test planning process. The result of this work is a prototype scheduling tool that optimizes the overall given test schedule in order to complete the work in a given time window while minimizing the total number of vehicles required for the test schedule. Initial results are presented that show a reduction in required test vehicles compared to manual scheduling of the same tasks as well as increased capability to ask “what-if” questions to further improve the schedule.

자동차 부품산업의 고객 요구 납기 충족을 위한 적정재고 수준에 관한 시뮬레이션 연구

Auto part industry supplies production for auto manufacturer and after market. These company have inventory for delivery. High inventory level can be good for delivery, but cost will be increase. Low inventory level can be customer unsatisfaction for delivery late. Low inventory level also is reason of low productivity by decreasing product batch size. These article suggest model for calculation a proper inventory level and prove a effect by simulation of some company.

An empirical assessment of the feasibility of battery electric vehicles for day-to-day driving

Driven by sustainability objectives, Australia like many nations in the developed world, is considering the option of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) as an alternative to conventional internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs). In addition to issues of capital and running costs, crucial questions remain over the specifications of such vehicles, particularly the required driving range, recharge time, re-charging infrastructure, performance, and other attributes that will be of importance to consumers. With this in mind, this paper assesses (hypothetically) the extent to which current car travel needs could be met by BEVs for a sample of motorists in Sydney assuming a home-based charging set-up, which is likely to be the primary option for early adopters of the technology. The approach uses five weeks of driving data recorded by GPS technology and builds up home-home tours to assess the distances between (in effect) charging possibilities. An energy consumption model based on characteristics of the vehicle, and the speeds recorded by the GPS is adapted to determine the charge used, while a battery recharge function is used to determine charging times based on the current battery level. Among the most pertinent findings are that over the five weeks, (i) BEVs with a range as low as 60km and a simple home-charge set-up would be able to accommodate well over 90% of day-to-day driving, (ii) however the incidence of tours requiring out-of-home charging increases markedly for vehicles below 24kWh (170km range), (iii) recharge time in itself has little impact on the feasibility of BEVs because vehicles spend the majority of their time parked and (iv) effective range can be dramatically impacted by both how a vehicle is driven and use of electrical auxiliaries, and (v) while unsuitable for long, high-speed journeys without some external re-charging options, BEVs appear particularly suited for the majority of day-to-day city driving in big cities where average journey speeds of 34km/h are close to optimal in terms of maximising vehicle range. The paper has implications for both policy-makers and auto manufacturers in breaking down some of the (perceived) barriers to greater uptake of BEVs in the future.

Review of J. D. Power Quality Measurement of U. S. and Japanese Automotive Industry

J. D. Power and Associates (JDP) conducts customer surveys and reports information on automobile quality, reliability, safety, satisfaction and buyer behavior. The Initial Quality Study (IQS) by JDP provides feedback on the quality of new vehicles during the first 90 days of ownership. This paper evaluates the quality measurements of IQS and its economic impact on the sales performance of major U.S. automakers (GM, Ford, and Chrysler) and Japanese automakers (Toyota, Honda, and Nissan) between 2001 and 2010. The following research questions are addressed: (1) Does IQS have significant impact on the customers’ purchasing behavior during the period of study? (2) Who benefits more from IQS, U.S. or Japanese automakers? (3) How can the quality information of IQS be measured and evaluated? In order to address the first two questions, the event study methodology is used to analyze the impact the IQS surveys on U.S. market sales. IQS resulted in the positive response to the market (or increasing market share) for Japanese automakers with the opposite result for U.S. auto manufacturers. To address the third question, two quality measures (IQS score and event type, i.e., positive or negative event) are defined and analyzed. The analysis shows that there is a positive relationship between IQS score and market share response. Similarly, positive news had a significant effect on the market response of IQS reports, while the effect of negative news was not significant.

Towards the Semantic Grid: A State of the Art Survey of Semantic Web Services and their Applicability to Collaborative Design, Engineering, and Procurement

ABSTRACT Today, organizations within the engineering and manufacturing domains place as much emphasis on the management and flow of knowledge through a value chain as they do commodities that are more tangible in nature. For example, parts suppliers in the Canadian automotive sector are often asked to collaborate with auto manufacturers in designing and engineering their product, instead of simply producing and supplying it. Such fundamental changes in the overarching economics of this industry have led to a greater focus on collaboration, both in terms of communicating across geographic divides to design components, as well as new requirements to merge heterogeneous data stores in order to manage this distributed procurement process. Our work on this project centred on finding solutions to the above by surveying the state of the industry, as well as assessing the potential employability of related tools in the workplace. It was concluded that the Access Grid (a low-cost, open-source videoconferencing platform) held significant potential to facilitate the high-quality sharing of audiovisual material, while technologies (the semantic and semantic web services) represented a feasible solution to the issues of data integration. When combined, these technologies form the semantic grid, the focus of this paper. Overall, it is concluded that the past and present success of this ICT in the information management sector may, with future work, link databases with the visualization interface to provide concurrent cost-benefit analyses. INTRODUCTION This paper partially serves as a business roadmap for an international joint research initiative of Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada and the Fraunhofer Institute (Fraunhofer IAO) in Stuttgart, Germany. The overall purpose of the project was to study the impact of emerging and convergent web and broad-based communications technologies on collaborative industrial design and manufacturing. Our primary work focused on creating new tools to better facilitate collaborative design and engineering, and this involved extending the Access Grid (AG)--a robust, open-source videoconferencing platform--to bridge geographic divides in the design process. Our interactions with the tools themselves are more fully detailed in a separate, forthcoming paper that we have authored (see also Fischer & Fraunhofer, 2006; Fischer, Murphy, Tippmann & Ayromlou, 2006, for background information). Our main focus in this paper concerns how this AG-enabled environment could then be annotated with web services to make connections with existing procurement systems and parts databases. In doing so, it is hoped that the system could make inferences as to how manipulation of the design by any end-user affects the supply chain in terms of procurement and/or manufacturing costs. In this case, we refer to the web services as being ubiquitous because of the focus on distributed, collaborative workflows. Our work was primarily focused on the impact to information management within the automotive sector to meet the immediate needs of our industrial partners. However, we do consider other applications (both within and outside of engineering and manufacturing) in this paper where appropriate. Research Objectives The objectives for this project were three-fold: first, to explore the potential and predicted impact of emerging technologies on collaborative industrial design; second, to assess the risks, potential return and probable development direction of these technologies so as to allow for strategic adoption by select businesses; third, to outline an actual technical reference architecture that can be implemented to meet specific requirements. This paper endeavours to meet the first two objectives by surveying the state of the industry and analyzing technological achievements with respect to their applicability and viability for deployment in business. …

A new framework for business impact analysis in business continuity management (with a case study)

Resumption of critical processes/functions after occurrence of any disruptive event is essential from the business continuity (BC) viewpoint. Business impact analysis (BIA) is a key part of a business continuity management system (BCMS) in which an organization’s key products/services along with the critical functions and their BC related indices, i.e., the maximum tolerable period of disruption (MTPD) and the minimum business continuity objective (MBCO) are determined. This study proposes a novel framework to conduct the BIA in organizations in a more systematic and comprehensive way mostly by relying on some effective multi attribute decision making (MADM) techniques. A case study in an auto part manufacturer is also provided to validate the proposed framework whose results demonstrate the applicability and usefulness of the proposed approach.

Analysis of Car Sales Mode in China

with the rapid development of automobile industry in our country, the traditional sales mode cannot meet the needs of the development of enterprise. This paper aims at analyzing automobile marketing mode, summarizing the sales mode of deficiencies in the current market, so as to predict the development direction of automobile sales mode and trend effectively, thus provide the decision-making reference for China's auto manufacturers, distributors, etc.

Development of a model of the dual clutch transmission in autonomie and validation with dynamometer test data

Owing to ever more stringent regulations and customers’ expectations, auto manufacturers have been considering numerous technology options to improve vehicle fuel economy. One of these is transmission technology, which has been shown to be one of the most cost-effective technologies. Over the past few years, transmissions have significantly evolved and have impacted both performance and fuel efficiency. As one of the advanced tranmissions, the dual clutch transmission (DCT) is the first automatic transmission to provide better efficiency than manual transmissions. DCTs provide reduced shift shocks and better driver comfort in addition to higher top speeds and torques. In this paper, a model and shifting controller for the DCT are developed in the vehicle systems context using Autonomie, a model-based vehicle simulation tool. Finally, the Autonomie DCT model and control strategy are validated using vehicle test data from Argonne’s Advanced Powertrain Research Facility.

HIDDEN MARKOV MODELS WITH COVARIATES FOR ANALYSIS OF DEFECTIVE INDUSTRIAL MACHINE PARTS

Monthly counts of industrial machine part errors are modeled using a two-state Hidden Markov Model (HMM) in order to describe the effect of machine part error correction and the amount of time spent on the error correction on the likelihood of the machine part to be in a &#34defective&#34 or &#34non-defective&#34 state. The number of machine parts errors were collected from a thermo plastic injection molding machine in a car bumper auto parts manufacturer in Liberec city, Czech Republic from January 2012 to November 2012. A Bayesian method is used for parameter estimation. The results of this study indicate that the machine part error correction and the amount of time spent on the error correction do not improve the machine part status of the individual part, but there is a very strong month-to-month dependence of the machine part states. Using the Mean Absolute Error (MAE) criterion, the performance of the proposed model (MAE = 1.62) and the HMM including machine part error correction only (MAE = 1.68), from our previous study, is not significantly different. However, the proposed model has more advantage in the fact that the machine part state can be explained by both the machine part error correction and the amount of time spent on the error correction.

Ethical Decision Making during Automated Vehicle Crashes

Automated vehicles have received much attention recently, particularly the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Urban Challenge vehicles, Google's self-driving cars, and various others from auto manufacturers. These vehicles have the potential to reduce crashes and improve roadway efficiency significantly by automating the responsibilities of the driver. Still, automated vehicles are expected to crash occasionally, even when all sensors, vehicle control components, and algorithms function perfectly. If a human driver is unable to take control in time, a computer will be responsible for precrash behavior. Unlike other automated vehicles, such as aircraft, in which every collision is catastrophic, and unlike guided track systems, which can avoid collisions only in one dimension, automated roadway vehicles can predict various crash trajectory alternatives and select a path with the lowest damage or likelihood of collision. In some situations, the preferred path may be ambiguous. The study reported here investigated automated vehicle crashing and concluded the following: (a) automated vehicles would almost certainly crash, (b) an automated vehicle's decisions that preceded certain crashes had a moral component, and (c) there was no obvious way to encode complex human morals effectively in software. The paper presents a three-phase approach to develop ethical crashing algorithms; the approach consists of a rational approach, an artificial intelligence approach, and a natural language requirement. The phases are theoretical and should be implemented as the technology becomes available.

404 プラズマチャージしたアルミニウム合金中の水素挙動(OS4-(1),OS4 オーガナイズドセッション《材料・組織と加工》)

In recent years, environmental problems such as drain on fossil fuels and global warming has been growing serious problems. Auto manufacturers are making in the development of fuel cell vehicles using hydrogen as clean energy. A high pressure storage is a mainstream method to store hydrogen in the fuel cell vehicles, but aluminum alloy that is used for high pressure container as liner material has the problem of hydrogen embrittlement. To elucidate mechanism for the hydrogen embrittlement, it is effective to charge the metallic specimen with large amount of hydrogen and to observe the behavior of the hydrogen in laboratory level. There is plasma charging method as one method for hydrogen charging. It is reported to introduce a large amount of hydrogen and not to make oxide film. In this study, the behavior of hydrogen in three aluminum alloys whose compositions are close to 2024 and 7075 has been investigated by mean of hydrogen microprint technique (HMPT) and thermal desorption spectroscopy (TDS).

Auto Components Industry Deepening the Supply Chain Management in ASEAN

Aims: Supply chain management (SCM) in automotive is the organization of the movement of auto products. It comprises the undertaking and storage of raw materials, work-in-process list, and completed automotive products from idea of foundation to idea of consumption. Interrelated or added webs, networks and node auto businesses are elaborate in the establishment of auto products and services prerequisite by end consumers in a supply chain. Automotive industry is a representation of mechanical genius by human generous. Being one of the wildest mounting segments in the domain its energetic development stages are described by environment of competition, product life cycle and customer request. Global manufacture webs show a significant part in East Asian financial prudence. Organizations in a supply chain organise and segment the a s s i s t a n c e s t h r o u g h market place instruments, a g r e e m e n t s , and corporation preparations, w h i c h prime to the snowballing competence of all associates. In today’s hard-ing economy, the rivalry amongst great companies has long been prolonged to struggle among troupes in supply chains. Completely Built Unit (CBU) is a car which is not creations or even gathered in the country deal. Such cars are trade in from the country of engineering and vended in the country of introduction. These cars don’t necessitate any engineering plant as it is directly sold in the target country’s marketplace. Auto engineering includes hundreds of portions from many dealers; supply chain management is a serious part in processes organization of the trade and a conclusive issue for the accomplishment or existence of the auto manufacturers. In such a case a study has been conducted to know the completely built units of automotive increasing through supply chain in ASEAN. Place and Duration of the Study: ASEAN brief data on automotive supply chain management and study is from 2010 to 2013. Methodology: The study is equipped grounded on primary and secondary sources. The primary source has composed through oral interview from stalwarts of automotive industry. The secondary data is collected from the reports of international conference of automotive industry and all existing literature has collected also from internet automotive websites, auto business magazines, e-auto journals etc. Results: Finding out the research depicts that total quantity of passenger and commercial vehicles have diminished due to snowballing rivalry among ASEAN auto portions supply chain management. Finally suggestions have been framed and conclusions have been drawn for the study. Conclusion: Automotive supply chains requirement fact-based aptitude to envisage which forthcoming situations are most likely to transpire – and the elasticity to get transposed previously they do. Now additional than continuously, shrewd successes.

To Sell and to Provide? The Economic and Environmental Implications of the Auto Manufacturer's Involvement in the Car Sharing Business

Several auto manufacturers have recently introduced car sharing programs. Although the structure of most programs is the same, there is no clear dominant strategy regarding the type of vehicles OEMs should provide through car sharing. In this paper, we consider an OEM who contemplates car sharing and designs its product line by accounting for the trade-off between driving performance and fuel efficiency under CAFE standards. Customers have different valuations of driving performance and decide whether to buy, join car sharing, or rely on their outside option. We find that the OEM increases the fuel efficiency of the vehicles it provides through car sharing. This higher efficiency enables the OEM to charge a higher selling price to the higher end of the market, increasing its profit from selling. This is especially beneficial to higher-end OEMs who face greater cannibalization and can explain why Daimler and BMW have been particularly active in introducing car sharing. Offering car sharing is not always environmentally beneficial. Even when it is, we find that doing so may reduce the OEM's CAFE level. In such cases, incentive multipliers should be granted for each shared car. Finally, if anticipating aggressive CAFE standards, OEMs may introduce car sharing to better absorb the increase in the production cost.

In‐House Globalization: The Role of Globally Distributed Design and Product Architecture on Product Development Performance

Changes in the global economy and technological advances are stimulating increased geographic distribution of new product design and development efforts. For large organizations that design and develop complex products, this geographic distribution has added a new layer of complexity to product development operations. In this empirical study of a large auto manufacturer, we examine the operational performance implications of splitting the design of vehicle subsystems across multiple geographic locations. Our results indicate that global distribution diminishes the chance of completing tasks on time and degrades subsystem design quality. Finally, by examining the interplay between subsystem centrality and global distribution, we found that higher centrality in the product architecture amplifies the impact of global distribution on subsystem error rates.

Electric propulsion system for electric vehicular technology: A review

Abstract In recent decades, factors such as the worldwide growing concern for pollution induced climate changes, increasingly stringent emission norms for vehicles and depleting petroleum resources coupled with volatility in their prices have motivated and accelerated development of sustainable and clean alternatives for transportation systems. Electrification of vehicular technology (EVT) is considered as a promising and sustainable alternative for future transportation systems. In evolution of EVT, instability of fuel price, fuel economy, range, performance and costs are the governing factors and prime concerns for researchers, auto manufacturers and customers. These factors are decided by the design of the electric propulsion system (EPS) for vehicular application and its suitable integration with various electrical and mechanical components. In this paper, a comparative overview of EVT along with a comprehensive analysis of EPS and a brief discussion on power flow control and management algorithms for EVT is presented. The paper also highlights the ongoing technological advancements and future challenges in the roadmap of EPS for the electrification of vehicular technology.

Dick Humbird and the Devil Wagon of Doom Cars, Carnivores, and Feminine Carnality inThis Side of Paradise

Dick Humbird and the Devil Wagon of Doom Cars, Carnivores, and Feminine Carnality in<i>This Side of Paradise</i>

Innovation and Leapfrogging in the Chinese Automobile Industry: Examples from Geely, BYD and Shifeng

History provides numerous examples of incumbent market leaders being leapfrogged by newcomers that have exploited the opportunities offered by new technologies. In light of the growing number of ecological threats linked to the use of the internal combustion engine, can Chinese auto manufacturers, which are newcomers to the industry, beat out the established Japanese, European, and North American automakers in the race to produce a less environmentally damaging form of transport? Three case studies from the Chinese automobile industry reveal the different ways in which this leapfrogging might take place and highlight the impact that such developments might have on automobile manufacturers in Japan and the West, both for conventional and electric vehicles.

Was the Chrysler Reorganization Different?

Chrysler, a failing auto manufacturer, was reorganized in a controversial chapter 11 in 2009. Financial creditors were paid a quarter of the amount owed them, while other creditors were paid more. The reorganization’s defenders asserted, among other things, that the proceeding and the sale structure was typical of prior practice. To see if this view fits the evidence, we examine all prior large section 363 sales for key financial ratios that can show whether a priority distortion is very unlikely. For example, in a cash sale with the buyer not assuming any debt of the bankrupt, the sale itself cannot ordinarily disrupt standard priorities. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test for these ratios indicates that Chrysler significantly differed from prior practice. It used less cash and the buyer assumed more debt than has been typical. Examining restricted samples, such as prior section 363 sales of firms with high unfunded pension obligations, yields similar results. The evidence here thus does not support the claim that the Chrysler reorganization fit the preexisting pattern of section 363 sales.

Using Hierarchical Task Analysis to Compare Four Vehicle Manufacturers’ Infotainment Systems

Mobile technology has become pervasive in the driving environment, and its use has been linked to increased crash risk. Of particular concern are devices that place visual-manual demands on drivers. In response, auto manufacturers have started equipping vehicles with technology that allows occupants to interact with manufacturer-installed functions and portable devices using speech commands instead of traditional visual-manual inputs. Although voice interfaces alleviate competition for visual resources, they impose cognitive demand that can degrade driving performance, especially if they are too demanding. Hierarchical task analyses were performed for a set of in-vehicle tasks using visual-manual and auditoryvocal interfaces for four different production systems in 2013 model year vehicles to assess the number of steps required to complete the tasks. In general, tasks performed using voice interfaces could be completed in fewer operations than when performed visual-manually. However, in some instances, the voice interfaces required more operations than the visual-manual interfaces. The additional operations resulted from the inability to chain multiple speech commands and verification of speech commands. Allowing chained voice commands reduces the number of operations required to complete a task and should reduce task time and overall cognitive demand. Verification steps likely reduce error but may impose a greater working memory load than generating speech commands and, in some cases, may exceed the limitations of working memory. The findings from this study will be used in a larger field study examining cognitive demand associated with different voice interface designs and the effect on driving and secondary task performance.

Problems and Countermeasures in the Popularization of China's New Energy Vehicles Market

New energy vehicles industry is the direction of the global auto industry transformation and upgrading, and it is also a strategic choice to deal with the oil shortage in China. But now it is appeared that the promotion of new energy vehicles is in a bind. The author makes a thorough research on the problems in the process of promoting the new energy vehicles in China and the problem is mainly reflected in three aspects: high cost, lagging infrastructure and low security, and puts forward some corresponding countermeasures and suggestions on the basis of the local government, auto manufacturers and consumers.