Automobile Factory Research Articles

The Missed Opportunity – the Bulgarrenault Car Factory in Plovdiv

The Missed Opportunity – the Bulgarrenault Car Factory in Plovdiv

Promises of Development, Land Acquisition, and Dispossession

This article examines how the futures promised by the postcolonial state through various projects leave peasants sceptical about a new government project at the rural margin of India. Focusing on a car factory project undertaken in 2006 by the government of the West Bengal Indian state, I explore how a half century-long project of land reforms shaped the dispossession politics of the peasants whose lands have been acquired for a car factory project. Based on an ethnography in Singur, this article explores how a car factory project at the very onset of its implementation instilled a sense of harm to life and livelihoods. Consequently, that project produced forms of spatiotemporal inequality between different socioeconomic groups in connection, not only with their ownership of land, but also with their respective vision of their work futures. Keywords: project form, dispossession, land acquisition, peasantry, India

A deep Q network algorithm for a car resequencing problem in automobile factories

A deep Q network algorithm for a car resequencing problem in automobile factories

A Consideration of Whole-Life Carbon Emissions by Indiana Manufacturers in Efforts to Gauge Lifecycle Sustainability Records in the Multinational Automobile Industry

Purpose: The Ricardo Report (2020) recommends a holistic analysis of the effects of the global auto industry on sustainability by assessing the impacts of automobiles on the environment throughout their lifecycle. Much of the literature on sustainability in the transportation sector focuses on vehicle exhaust emissions and their contribution to urban smog, and there has been little consideration of emissions produced during the automobile manufacturing process itself. 
 Materials and Methods: This study builds on the lifecycle emissions approach recommended by the Ricardo Report. Specifically, data on the pounds of pollution emitted was collected from the Toxic Release Inventory report of major multinational automobile producers and analyzed via piecewise linear regression analyses to provide insight about the pollution emitted during a vehicle’s production. 
 Findings: The findings in this study will fill a gap in Ricardo’s “birth to grave” proposal to quantify whole-life carbon emissions in the automobile sector.
 Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: As sustainability efforts within the automotive market continues to evolve, it is important to analyze automobile whole-life carbon emissions rather than just what is emitted from the tailpipe, and this study fills a gap in the Ricardo Report by providing data related to the rates of pollution emitted during the manufacture of vehicles at multinational automobile factories in America.

Enraizamento Político e Institucional do IED: um estudo de caso da Nissan no Rio, Brasil

Abstract Although globalization is an interdisciplinary subject, phenomena such as foreign direct investments (FDI) are thought of as belonging to the economic sphere. In this article, we draw from the global production network model and the New Economic Sociology of FDIs to test the embeddedness of economic action. We've designed a least likely case study from an FDI in the auto industry, evaluating Nissan Motor Co.’s decision-making process to build an automobile factory in Brazil. Our findings support the sociopolitical embeddedness hypothesis. The paper contributes to the literature of Economic Sociology when we argue that, despite the "always embedded" assumption, Nissan's investment decision was progressively embedded in time and space.

Samochód dla Kowalskiego. Polaków drogi do masowej motoryzacji i codzienność motoryzacyjna w okresie 1971–1989

The text aims to provide an insight into the everyday automotive life of owners of passenger cars during the last two decades of the Polish People’s Republic. The turning point of the 1960s and 1970s in the communist bloc countries marked a shift towards consumption, with a particular emphasis on individual motorization. In Poland, the new ruling team under Edward Gierek announced a significant increase in the production of passenger cars. The licensing agreement for manufacturing the Fiat 126p at the Passenger Car Factory was intended to be a milestone in the development of individual motorization. The people enthusiastically embraced the government’s plans, and there was a mass prepayment for the ‘maluch’ (Fiat 126p). Unfortunately, throughout the two decades discussed, it was impossible to meet the popular demand for this car fully. The altered sales system in 1981 failed due to production shortages, and the waiting period extended to even ten years. As a result, Poles turned massively towards car markets. Acquiring a car and its subsequent maintenance involved specific expenses. Therefore, the possibilities of obtaining and using a car were tied to a certain income level. The sharp increase in the number of cars significantly impacted leisure activities, especially the development of automotive tourism.

Towards the identification of the volatile organic compounds emitted by the coatings used in a car factory painting line

AbstractOne of the main reasons for the degradation of working conditions is the lack of air quality. It is known that indoor air contaminants pose a risk to both the human organism and the environment, which constitutes a challenge for employers and major industries. A car factory painting line is an evident example of a work location in which the employers must be especially aware and concerned with the employees' health. Since the coatings are the main VOCs-emitting source, this work studied the analytes emitted by four primers, 17 basecoats and one varnish used in a car factory of a world-renowned automotive brand, with gas chromatography-ion mobility spectrometry (GC-IMS), as a way of identifying all the coating-borne VOCs that can be emitted to the indoor air. The variability of the collected data was assessed, and the repeatability of the results proved the suitability of GC-IMS for this type of study. Among primers, inks and varnish, 45 VOCs were accurately identified using an exclusively developed database of compounds. The presence of the identified analytes in the composition of the coatings represents the potentiality of being emitted to the indoor air of the factory and, consequently, denotes their eventual toxicity for the employees of the painting line. These results represent a step forward in the assessment of the panting line work conditions, so eventual consequences to the employees’ health are theoretically discussed; nonetheless, further studies aim to examine air samples of the factory and evaluate the work conditions and actual consequences to the employees that must be developed.

Effect of Lipid Profile Parameters on Noise Induced Hearing Loss.

Noise induced hearing loss (NIHL) is an irreversible occupational disease among industrial workers. Recent studies have reported that changes in some metabolic factors such as the serum level of sugar and lipids might have a role in suffering from NIHL among workers exposed to noise. We designed this study to assess the association between lipid profile changes and NIHL occurrence among noise-exposed workers. This case-control study has been conducted according to noise-exposed workers registry data in one of the Iranian automobile factories between 2007 and 2017. We classified study workers into the NIHL and control groups. We assessed the impact of lipid profile parameters across the study groups using the independent samples t-test, chi-square, and regression. The mean serum level of cholesterol was significantly higher in the NIHL group than in workers of the control group (215.27 ± 60.30 vs 204.49 ± 63.69 mg/dL; P = 0.041). Moreover, the serum level of HDL was significantly lower in workers in the NIHL group compared with the control group (35.21 ± 6.87 vs 37.43 ± 7.28 mg/dL; P < 0.001). Although other lipid profile parameters (LDL, TG, LDL/HDL ratio) were higher among workers of the NIHL group, their differences were not significant. A cholesterol level lower than 200 mg/dL is known as a protective factor and an HDL level lower than 40 mg/dL is an NIHL risk factor. More attention should be paid to controlling serum levels of cholesterol and HDL.

In Situ Indoor Air Volatile Organic Compounds Assessment in a Car Factory Painting Line

Proper working conditions must be one of the employers’ main concerns in any type of company but particularly in work locations where the employees are chronically exposed to hazardous compounds, like factories and production lines. Regarding this challenge, the present research addresses the mapping of a car factory painting line to possibly toxic volatile organic compounds emitted by all the coatings and chemicals used during the work shifts for the future evaluation of employees’ exposure. For the first time, a Gas Chromatography–Ion Mobility Spectrometry device was employed for the in situ detection of volatile organic compounds in an automotive factory. A total of 26 analytes were detected at nine different locations, of which 15 VOCs were accurately identified. Pure chemical-grade substances were used for the development of the VOC database. Although quantitative analysis was not the goal of this study, a calibration model was presented to one analyte for exemplificative purposes. Relative intensity profiles were plotted for all locations, revealing that some indoor VOCs can reach intensity levels up to 60 times higher than in outdoor air samples. The achieved results proved that the painting line has an abundant number of VOCs emitted from different sources and may lead to serious health risks for the employees. Additional studies shall be developed in the painting line for quantitative evaluation of the existing VOCs and their influence on the employees’ health conditions.

Evaluation of the Environmental Cost of Integrated Inbound Logistics: A Case Study of a Gigafactory of a Chinese Logistics Firm

In recent years, sustainable development has become an emerging trend in the logistics industry. Smart manufacturing factories pursue green logistics processes with lower energy consumption and reduced carbon emission. The environmental sustainability of the logistics process is widely acknowledged as an important issue. However, a standardized methodology for assessing the environmental cost of logistics-process-aided smart manufacturing is lacking. This paper presents a concept for determining the inbound logistics environmental cost (ILEC) of a gigafactory. Additionally, a novel structured methodology for ILEC assessment is proposed to uniformly describe the gigafactory’s logistics environmental cost, regarding the “double carbon” goal (peak carbon dioxide emissions and carbon neutrality). First, eight types of basic logistics activities and six logistics phases associated with the gigafactory’s inbound logistics are defined. The mapping relationships between the logistics phases and the basic logistics activities are constructed. Then, the novel concepts of environmental price cost (EPC) and environmental impact cost (EIC) are defined and presented. Finally, the ILEC of the gigafactory, including EPC and EIC, is assessed based on mapping relationships and an environmental cost model. We validate this model using the advanced Geely Automobile factory in China in order to analyze the actual inbound logistics environmental costs and how to assess its environmental price and environmental impact. Results from the data model show the environmental costs throughout the whole process and the detailed composition ratio of EPC and EIC in the inbound logistics. Based on the implementation of the ILEC model, our study helps gigafactories to identify critical logistics nodes through energy consumption and to measure the environmental performance of the inbound logistics process. Furthermore, our study helps gigafactories to develop practical environmental strategies.

'C’est comme ça qu’on fabrique des automobiles': Race, work, and colonial afterlives in Robert Linhart's L’Établi

Robert Linhart's L’Établi recounts the author's experience of ‘établissement’ as a young Maoist militant in the months immediately following May ‘68. Ten years after leaving the École normale supérieure to work and politically organize at the Citroën automobile factory in Choisy, Linhart reflects on his experiences on the assembly line, and his attempts to organize an ultimately unsuccessful wildcat strike from within the factory. This article revisits L'Établi alongside Linhart's littlestudied critical writings on racism, imperialism, and capitalist production in order to foreground two interwoven, yet under-appreciated facets of the work, and Linhart's corpus more broadly: first, Linhart's critique of a dense racial and colonial logic which undergirded the division of labor and maintenance of orderly production in the factory despite the purported demise of the French Empire. And second, the his innovation as not just a political memoirist, but as an inventive literary strategist. To this end, this article focuses on the surprising movements of poetic effervescence which appear throughout L'Établi, which reveal themselves to be thoroughly interwoven with Linhart's anti-imperial, anti-capitalist project.

Etapy trudnogo puti: Ul'yanovskij avtomobil'nyj zavod v gody Velikoj Otechestvennoj vojny

The article analyzes the performance of the Ulyanovsk Automobile Plant during the Great Patriotic War. The process of reorganization of the enterprise in 1944, the construction of a new car factory and the preparation for the production of a vehicle with a diesel engine ZIS-253 are considered. It was concluded that the difficulties of wartime, the acute shortage of building materials and labor resources did not allow the full implementation of the project to create a new diesel engine production.

The Advantages Comparative of Economic Sectors in Pinrang Regency at 2016 – 2020

Purpose: The objective of this study is to identify and analyze the sectors that have had a comparative advantage in Pinrang Regency in the last 5 years, using the location matching (LQ) method. Theoretical framework: The comparative advantage was Salvator (1997). Ricardo explained that if two countries trade with each other and export goods with a comparative advantage, they will be lucky. Design/methodology/approach: To determine the base sectors, it was carried out using the LQ formula where this technique presented a relative comparison between the capabilities of a sector with the same sector in Pinrang Regency/City. Findings: The results of this research are expected to be a source of scientific research for economic operators, especially in the field of regional planning. According to the results of the cocin-n (LQ) location, the primary sector of Pinrang Regency is agriculture. In addition to healthcare, food manufacturing, food manufacturing, electricity and electricity have become a source of transportation, a car factory, one of industrial and industrial facilities. Research, Practical &amp; Social implications: The equitable distribution of regional economic development should take into account the problems and opportunities for specialization in the process of economic development in the area, with the comparative advantages of each area. Originality/value: The Queen of Pinrang is one of the 24 regenerations of South Sulawesi province. This area is an independent environment and the Government has the authority to establish governance and progress and provide services to the community to properly plan, manage and utilize the economic potential of the region.

Research and Implementation of CPS for Transmission Front Middle Case Assembly Line

As an indispensable part of the automobile factory transmission system, the transmission assembly line has a high level of automation and can play as a pioneer in the digital transformation of production. However, for the transmission production process, especially the front and middle case, there are many problems, such as a low degree of informatization, low efficiency of information transmission, and lack of a platform for rapid information release and sharing. This leads to the difficulty of timely discovery and feedback of exceptional events, resulting in low assembly efficiency. Therefore, this paper constructs its cyber–physical system (CPS) with the help of the Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, such as physical identification, information collection, and transmission. It contributes to improving the intelligent level of transmission of front and middle case assembly, strengthening the close integration, interaction, and collaboration between a large amount of assembly data and the physical entity of the assembly process, realizing the real-time monitoring of the transmission front and middle case assembly process, timely discovering, provide feedback, and dealing with exceptional events. In addition, scientific and effective adjustment strategies based on the data can be provided. Ultimately, the assembly efficiency of the transmission front and middle case is improved, ensuring the stability of the assembly line.

High Sensitivity Prototype Kit with IoT System for Fire Detection in a Peatland Swamp Forest Area

Smoke sensor of the photoelectric type is often used in indoor fire detection system. It is very sensitive to fire smoke and will trigger a fire alarm quickly when the presence of smoke is detected.By making a small innovation, this sensor can be implemented outdoors by means of IoT as used in the forest fire early detection system. However, the typical use of the sensor without any modification causes the sensitivity of the system to be very low such as failing to identify the actual presence of smoke. To increase the sensitivity of systems that use this type of sensor, the developed system is equipped withan automatic reclosing operation that is able to distinguish real smoke or not. The system has been designed to trigger cloud servers only after detecting smoke for ten seconds or beyond. System equipped with automatic reclosing operation show better response by not triggering cloud servers when detecting temporary smoke from car, motorcycle or nearby factory. When comparing the system before and after using this operation is, it was found that the system no longer sends smoke notification message to the user via Telegram channel when this temporary smoke is detected

Active medical recommendation is the best tool for increasing influenza vaccine coverage in healthy adult workers

IntroductionIn Spain, influenza vaccination is available in companies free of charge for their workers. Despite this, vaccination coverage against influenza is very low in these groups. ObjectivesThe aim of this work is to know the reasons for acceptance of influenza vaccination in a working population. MethodsDuring the 2021–2022 influenza vaccination campaign, we conducted a survey of two groups of workers at the automobile factories of RENAULT ESPAÑA S.A. in the cities of Valladolid and Palencia (Spain). The first group (NV) was formed by 304 (33.5%) workers who did not receive the influenza vaccine in the previous season. The second (V) was formed by 604 workers (66.5%) who had been vaccinated against influenza at least the previous season. In the NV group, they were asked the reasons why they did not get vaccinated the previous season and if they did so in 2021–2022. In group V, only the reasons for continuing to be vaccinated were asked. ResultsIn NV, the main reason for avoiding vaccination in the previous season was the lack of perception of the severity of the influenza infection (74.7%), and 31.6% and 29.0% of them decided to get vaccinated during the 2021–2022 season due to the fear of co-infection of SARS-CoV-2 and influenza and medical recommendations respectively. The 83.5% of group V responded that the reason for getting vaccinated in 2021–2022 was their adherence to vaccination. ConclusionsThe results show that medical recommendation is the best tool to vaccinate workers against influenza and make them adhere to it. Also, the fear to co-infection of COVID-19 and flu was a frequent reason for getting vaccinated, above all in NV.

A Cloud-based State of Health Estimation Method for Lithium-ion Batteries Using Sparse Charging Data

Under the current background of the national standard requirements for electric vehicle remote management and the companies’ needs for their digital platform services, automobile factories habitually transmit battery data to a cloud in a sparse way for state of health (SOH) estimation. Compared with the dynamic discharge condition of the vehicle, the charging process has been noticed in recent years due to its relatively stable advantages. In this paper, a cloud-based SOH estimation method for lithium-ion batteries using sparse charging data is proposed. A HI feature that can be extracted from the sparse data is derived and only the constant voltage charging process is considered. By using the experimental data deployed on the cloud computing system, the correlation of battery health with the HI is verified and SOH can be efficiently estimated by taking as this feature an input to three data-driven methods. The results show that all methods can achieve a low test error of 2% under 10s sparsity, which is promising to be applied in cloud sparse charging conditions.

Active medical recommendation is the best tool for increasing influenza vaccine coverage in healthy adult workers

IntroductionIn Spain, influenza vaccination is available in companies free of charge for their workers. Despite this, vaccination coverage against influenza is very low in these groups. ObjectivesThe aim of this work is to know the reasons for acceptance of influenza vaccination in a working population. MethodsDuring the 2021–2022 influenza vaccination campaign, we conducted a survey of two groups of workers at the automobile factories of RENAULT ESPAÑA S.A. in the cities of Valladolid and Palencia (Spain). The first group (NV) was formed by 304 (33.5%) workers who did not receive the influenza vaccine in the previous season. The second (V) was formed by 604 workers (66.5%) who had been vaccinated against influenza at least the previous season. In the NV group, they were asked the reasons why they did not get vaccinated the previous season and if they did so in 2021–2022. In group V, only the reasons for continuing to be vaccinated were asked. ResultsIn NV, the main reason for avoiding vaccination in the previous season was the lack of perception of the severity of the influenza infection (74.7%), and 31.6% and 29.0% of them decided to get vaccinated during the 2021–2022 season due to the fear of co-infection of SARS-CoV-2 and influenza and medical recommendations respectively. The 83.5% of group V responded that the reason for getting vaccinated in 2021–2022 was their adherence to vaccination. ConclusionsThe results show that medical recommendation is the best tool to vaccinate workers against influenza and make them adhere to it. Also, the fear to co-infection of COVID-19 and flu was a frequent reason for getting vaccinated, above all in NV.

STUDY OF DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY OF SELF-OWNED BRAND PASSENGER VEHICLE OF DONGFENG UNDER THE NEW ENERGY VEHICLE ERA

With the continuous development of China, energy security and environmental protection gradually become national strategic issues, and the automotive industry as the national economic development foundation and pillar industry is affected by such two national strategic issues. To get rid of the dependence on imported petroleum and achieve energy conservation and emission reduction, it is inevitable for China to strive to develop new energy vehicle. In recent ten years, the new energy vehicle industry has developed rapidly with the policy support of the government of China. The Dongfeng Motor Group as traditional automobile factory, under the tide of new energy vehicle, bears the double attack from the new power of vehicle manufacturing and traditional automobile factory, and confronts the double pressure of product transformation and improvement of self-owned brand's market share. The self-owned brand passenger vehicle of Dongfeng is researched in the PESTE analysis, FIVE FORCES analysis and SWOT analysis, and some new suggestions concerning product strategies and market strategies are offered through interview survey, so that Dongfeng Motor Corporation Passenger Vehicle Company can grasp the development opportunity to twist the adverse situation in new situation and can provide certain consideration and reference for the future development of other motor corporations.

Metabolic profiling of night shift work – The HORMONIT study

ABSTRACT Mechanistic studies are needed to understand how rotating shift work perturbs metabolic processing. We collected plasma samples (n = 196) from 49 males, rotating car factory shift workers at the beginning and end of a night-shift (22:00–06:00 h) and day-shift (06:00 h-14:00 h). Samples underwent targeted LC-MS/MS metabolomics and concentrations of 130 metabolites were log2-transformed and pareto-scaled. An elastic net selected the most influential metabolites for linear mixed models examining within-person variation in metabolite levels at night-shift end (06:00 h) compared to day-shift start (06:00 h). Quantitative enrichment analysis explored differentially enriched biological pathways between sample time points. We included 20 metabolites (amino acids, biogenic amines, acylcarnitines, glycerophospholipids) in mixed models. Night-shift was associated with changes in concentrations of arginine (geometric mean ratio [GMR] 2.30, 95%CI 1.25, 4.23), glutamine (GMR 2.22, 95%CI 1.53, 3.24), kynurenine (GMR 3.22, 95%CI 1.05, 9.87), lysoPC18:2 (GMR 1.86, 95%CI 1.11, 3.11), lysoPC20:3 (GMR 2.48, 95%CI 1.05, 5.83), PCaa34:2 (GMR 2.27, 95%CI 1.16, 4.44), and PCae38:5 (GMR 1.66, 95%CI 1.02, 2.68). Tryptophan metabolism, glutathione metabolism, alanine metabolism, glycine and serine metabolism, and urea cycle were pathways differing between shifts. Night shift work was associated with changes in metabolites and the perturbation of metabolic and biochemical pathways related to a variety of health outcomes.