Major Car Manufacturers Research Articles

Automobile choices within e-commerce, technology innovation and current financial environments

In today's market, automobile manufacturers must have a significant market presence to compete and, in many cases, just to survive in a marketplace where several of the major automobile manufacturers must find emerging markets and innovations within existing markets. While the prevailing opinion on the reason for the current auto industry crisis centres around the economic downturn and decreased consumer spending on major items such as automobiles, there is evidence that consumers have cut back on automobile purchases for a series of additional reasons. A sample of semiprofessional and professional working professionals, representing a number of service-related firms in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area, were surveyed and, based on a sample size of 200, four hypotheses were tested using multiple linear regression techniques. The fuel efficiency of new automobiles has not improved significantly enough to induce customers to purchase new automobiles on fuel savings considerations. Customers may fear that because of accelerated technology progress, a new automobile will become obsolete rapidly and so they are resistant to making the investment. The latest technological advances such as in-built Geographical Positioning System (GPS) systems can be easily purchased separately and do not require purchase of the automobile. In general, new automobiles are not viewed as significantly superior to older automobiles.

An Application of Value-of-Information to Decision Process Reengineering

Value of information (VOI) methods were used to guide changes to recurrent organizational decision processes under a reengineering effort at a major automobile manufacturer to reduce supply and demand imbalances involving capacity for parts and products. We modeled representative decisions assuming that they would be made with and without the benefit of improved information flows and calculated the resulting increase in expected value. By factoring in the entire range of decisions affected by a process change, we scaled the value of each organizational change to a life cycle value. The results quantified the impact of organizational changes in order to refine and prioritize a portfolio of change projects.

Management of Multi Alliances for Innovation

Sona Koyo Steering Systems Limited (SKSSL) is one of the major automobile component manufacturing organizations in India. A decade ago, SKSSL realized that they could not totally depend upon their technology partners for orders but needed to expand independently within the global market. The company had to become a partner of choice for its technical partners as well as for its global corporate customers. It was facing constraints because of contractual obligations under which the organization could not supply auto components to its partners’ customers. Further constraints were imposed by the Research and Development (R&D) investments and establishments. This case is about how Dr Surinder Kapur, founder chairman of SKSSL, was able to strategically increase the company’s global customer base and take the organization on the path of innovation.

One Logistics standard for all production plants

Many major car manufacturers are currently in the process of standardising their complex and heterogeneous IT environments with the goal of reducing the number of interfaces and bringing down rising support costs. Volkswagen has developed a fully-automated material control system called ITLS (Inhouse Transport Logistics System), which is now being successively rolled out to various European production plants.

Up to the marque [contractors in car manufacturing

Major car manufacturers have long relied upon third- party contractors to produce their top brands for them. Carrying the Porsche or Mercedes badge on your vehicle no longer guarantees that it was assembled by the brand owner. A range of global car makers, such as Volkswagen, Mercedes, Ford and Chrysler, use little-known contractors to produce low-volume and specialised models for them. These contractors have become dubbed '0.5-tier' suppliers because they sit between the car companies (the original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs) and 'tier-one' suppliers of components and systems to the OEMs.

Promoting productivity in manufacturing companies in developing countries: An information system for managing and querying knowledge bases in the automotive industry in Mexico

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that a low-budget information system using knowledge bases can be developed and adopted in a manufacturing firm to improve the productivity of the organization. The automotive industry uses complex software systems to perform product engineering at all stages of the production process, from conceptual design to manufacture. For each of these stages, different software tools of great complexity are employed, and the people using these tools need constant support in order to continue being productive even when problems arise with the software they are using. Given the amount and variety of queries made by product engineering personnel to the software support staff, said staff can benefit from a software tool that stores their expertise for reuse and can be queried in order to generate quick solutions to problems with product engineering software. In this article, we describe an information system that uses these ideas related to case-based reasoning in order to flexibly and efficiently reply when problem situations are encountered by the product engineering staff of a major automobile manufacturer. This setup can relieve some of the burden placed on the software support staff and reduce their response time. The information system resulted from a collaboration between a large multinational company and our university, specifically its undergraduate computer engineering students, benefitting all parties involved in the project and helping in the development of our country, Mexico. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Wankel auf dem Prüfstand: Ursprung, Entwicklung, und Niedergang eines innovativen Motorenkonzeptes (review)

Reviewed by: Wankel auf dem Prüfstand: Ursprung, Entwicklung, und Niedergang eines innovativen Motorenkonzeptes Ulrich Wengenroth (bio) Wankel auf dem Prüfstand: Ursprung, Entwicklung, und Niedergang eines innovativen Motorenkonzeptes. By Ulrich Ch. Knapp . Münster: Waxmann, 2006. Pp. 213. €25.50. This book by Ulrich Ch. Knapp is a history of the Wankel rotary engine from a German perspective. Instead of reciprocating pistons, the Wankel uses a rotor for the conventional four-stroke process of most gasoline-powered engines. Beginning in the mid-1960s, Wankel engines were used in cars, boats, and pumps. But the only Wankel-powered automobile today is a Mazda sports car. While the Wankel engine is very compact, delivers unparalleled smooth power, and easily revs up, its shortcomings are low mileage and serious exhaust pollution. Both are consequences of the oddly shaped, moving combustion chamber that does not allow for efficient combustion. Felix Wankel (1902–1988) was a school dropout with no engineering education. In 1922 he organized a militant forerunner to the SA, and in 1926 he formally joined the Nazi Party. Upset by the personal vanities of some Nazi fat cats, he left the party in 1932 and was even a political prisoner for a few months after the Nazis' rise to power in 1933. This did not affect his anti-democratic attitude, and throughout the Nazi years he courted party leaders all the way up to Hitler to find support for his engineering experiments. His main supporter and advisor from the early 1930s until well after World War II was Wilhelm Keppler, economic adviser to the Nazi government, SS leader, undersecretary of state "for special tasks," and in the end a convicted war criminal. Bored by his job as an insurance agent, Wankel began developing rotary engines in the late 1920s in a small workshop. His experience with rotary valves earned him a number of research contracts for aircraft engines. The breakthrough for a workable rotary engine only came in the 1950s. While major automobile firms turned a cold shoulder, Wankel found support at NSU, a small manufacturer of motorcycles and subcompact cars. NSU was to develop the Wankel engine into an automobile power plant, first in a little "spider" and eventually in a (European) full-size limousine. Financially more important—and certainly more profitable—was licensing by NSU and Wankel. Virtually all major engine and auto manufacturers took a Wankel license in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The first licensee in America was Curtiss-Wright; the most promising was General Motors. But with the exception of Mazda, all of this came to nothing. The rise of oil prices after 1973 killed the low-mileage Wankel. And, more than Knapp admits, tightening pollution restrictions eventually sealed the fate of this ingenious little engine. Felix Wankel himself had been smart enough to sell his engineering firm in 1972—a year before gas prices skyrocketed—to Lonrho, a British conglomerate, for 100 million deutschmarks. There is a school of Wankel enthusiasts who claim that a "piston cartel" [End Page 652] among major car manufacturers obstructed the development of a superior technology. Knapp debunks all the conspiracy theories. He convincingly shows that it was the fundamental shortcomings of the rotary engine and the simultaneous improvement of traditional piston engines that made auto manufacturers turn away as they had previously done with gas turbines. Knapp is very good in showing how it took an innovative group of engineers at the periphery of auto manufacture to venture into a groundbreaking new technology in the first place. He follows this group and eventually finds some of them at Audi, designing a small diesel engine for Volkswagen. Diesels yield the best mileage in cars and were felt to be a godsend in the face of rising oil prices. America quickly gave up on diesel-powered autos, but in continental Europe they currently have a market share of more than 50 percent. Diesels were the answer to high fuel costs, while Wankels gave an idea of how silent a car could be. The combination of the two characteristics was the R&D path of the European car industry. Wankel engines were not ineffective, as Knapp shows, they just turned up...

An application of interdependent lot size and consolidation point choice

The efficiency of consolidation points in a distribution system is driven both by the total volume transported and by the lot size in which the product travels. We examine a finished goods distribution system for a major automobile manufacturer that is setting policy concurrently for consolidation points and for the lot size of transport. Through simulation of the distribution system we show the impacts of consolidation on product holding time, volume volatility and customer service. Our results show a significant reduction in total system inventory from consolidation; however, some customers’ service is adversely affected. We then develop a methodology for determining the best combination of consolidation, direct shipment and lot size for all origins and destinations in the distribution system in order to minimize inventory holding time while simplifying operations and maintaining customer service. Preliminary results are shown which demonstrate the potential for substantial reductions in the total finished vehicle holding time in the system.

Inherent risks of production internationalisation strategies in the automobile industry

This paper evaluates the production internationalisation strategies of major automobile manufacturers in recent years and reveals the potential risks of the increased internationalisation trends for the future of the automobile industry. At the outset, the current and future internationalisation strategies of the major carmakers are examined. This evaluation reveals that the major automobile manufacturers are increasingly shifting production to lower-cost countries in Asia, Eastern Europe, and South America. Despite the unmistakable advantages, these internationalisation strategies are not without hazards. In fact, the concentration of production in lower-cost countries may lead to the declining competitiveness of car industries in developed countries. In turn, the increased reliance on lower-cost countries is dangerous because of political and market uncertainties and exchange rate instabilities. Negative developments in these areas have the potential to seriously damage the global automobile industry in the long term.

Developing an integration architecture for process portals

Many companies still use portals to mange link lists or to present HTML pages to an anonymous group of users. This paper argues that a portal's benefits strongly depend on its personalisation along the individual user processes. Besides customer profiles and histories relevant design issues are also the operational collaboration processes and the link of the embedded services to the internal and/or external providers in the upstream supply chain. These process portals not only require an in-depth process analysis, but also the efficient integration of heterogeneous applications on the information systems level. The goal is to provide an integrated, role-based and process-oriented access to all relevant applications. For this purpose integration architectures add one layer to existing application architectures and need to be linked to existing process and application architectures. In view of an estimated growing diffusion of process portals, this article argues that the available approaches to integration architecture in the literature and in practice do not adequately address inter-organisational requirements, and develops an extended architecture model. The components required to implement this architecture are illustrated using an example of a major automobile manufacturer.

Discussion and Analysis of Flue Gas Utilization in a Phosphoric Acid Fuel Cell Engine During Idle Operation

Fuel cell technology has in recent years won the favor of all major car manufacturers as a likely future replacement of the internal combustion engine. This has been driven by the potential for high efficiency and low emissions. Still, fuel cell engines must overcome major hurdles before being introduced into the market. One such hurdle is systems integration; in particular, with fuel cell engines that do not use hydrogen as their primary fuel. In these engines, fuels, such as methanol, are employed instead of hydrogen because of their high-energy density and ease of storage. However, these benefits are counterbalanced by the need to reform these fuels on-board the fuel cell vehicle, thus substantially increasing the complexity of the fuel cell engine. Through the course of operating a 30ft methanol-fueled phosphoric acid fuel cell bus, repeated overheating of the steam-reformer catalyst bed at low engine power outputs was noted. For the purpose of better understanding these overheating events, relevant data was obtained from the bus. Bus operation at low-power outputs was found to have low hydrogen consumption (∼40% to ∼60% of the stack’s incoming hydrogen) due to low electrical demands and reformate flow rate constraints. In the bus, the anode flue gas is burned in the reformer burner, which provides the heat required for the endothermic methanol steam reforming reaction (see Fig. 1 later). At low engine power, the flue gas is the reformer burner’s only fuel, but the energy carried by the flue gas is much greater than the energy required for the reforming reaction and consequently causes reformer overheating at low power. This case serves as an example of how appropriate fuel cell system integration is crucial in order to harness fuel cell benefits. To study such system integration problems, a steady-state model of the fuel cell bus engine was developed. Using this model the bus reformer overheating problem was understood and several possible improvements for utilization of the flue gas were conceited.

Information Dissemination in Self-Organizing Intervehicle Networks

Intervehicle communication (IVC) is an emerging topic in research and application that is getting increasing attention from all major car manufacturers. In this paper, a novel method for scalable information dissemination in highly mobile ad hoc networks is proposed: segment-oriented data abstraction and dissemination (SODAD). With SODAD, information can be distributed in an information range multiple orders of magnitude larger than the transmission range of the air interface, even if only 1%-3% of all vehicles are equipped with an IVC system, e.g., during market introduction. By restricting the method to the dissemination of map/position-based data, scalability is achieved. In the second half of this paper, an example application for the SODAD method is presented: a self-organizing traffic-information system (SOTIS). In SOTIS, a car is equipped with a satellite navigation receiver, an IVC system, and a digital map. Each individual vehicle collects traffic information for its local area. Using the digital map, the traffic information is analyzed based on road segments. By distributing the information in the ad hoc intervehicle network using the SODAD method, a decentralized traffic information system is created. The performance of the proposed methods is evaluated using network simulation with vehicular mobility models. Simulation results for typical scenarios are presented. Furthermore, a prototype implementation based on commercially available standard hardware demonstrates the feasibility of the proposed approach.

Cost estimation of a software product using COCOMO II.2000 model – a case study

This paper discusses the estimation cost in terms of effort spent on a software product (project). COCOMO II.2000 Model has been employed for estimating the effort of an embedded system project. This study has been made in a software services company, which is involved in software development for an embedded system, client-server and Internet environment. The embedded systems group is involved in developing software for major car manufacturers. This study is based on a sample of ten projects, of which eight are development projects and two are porting projects. The actual effort on the projects has been collected from the metrics database of the company. The Lines of code for the various projects have been enumerated using “Code Count” tool to achieve the logical source lines of code for each project. The standard questionnaire has been used to collect the required data to arrive at the various scale factors and effort multipliers. The calibration of the COCOMO (Constructive Cost Model) has been done through Natural Log approach and curve fitting approach. Statistical tools like MS-EXCEL 2000, SPSSv10, Curve Expert 1.3 and data fit have been used for this purpose. The study shows that the curve fitting approach yields better estimates of the model parameters. The calibration of COCOMO Model helps the company estimate the effort that is to be spent on the software development projects.

Environment within a car door

With increasing sophistication of the motor car, particularly in the areas of ergonomics and user-friendly features, the need for, and expectation of, reliability have also increased, with all major car manufacturers offering up to five-year warranties on their vehicles as standard. Certain fundamental components, whose levels of sophistication continue to increase, are located within the car door, such as the latching and window-winding mechanisms, and the reliability requirements of these components are no less stringent than for components located in other areas of the vehicle. In order to design a component or system that will be reliable, the environment in which it is to operate must be taken into account, and this paper is therefore concerned with the quantification of environmental conditions within a car door, under a variety of naturally occurring and simulated weather conditions, and in other relevant situations, such as during car washes. Variables measured include temperature and humidity, and volume of water flowing through the door compartment under certain conditions; visual observations and recordings were also made, in order to best define the environment within the car door.

Assessment of the Automobile Assembly Paint Process for Energy, Environmental, and Economic Improvement

A coat of paint adds considerable value to an automobile. In addition to consuming up to 60% of the energy needed by automobile assembly plants, however, the painting process also creates both economic and environmental impacts. This study investigated the degree of cost and environmental impact improvement that can be expected when modifications are considered for existing paint processes through heat integration. In order to accomplish this goal, a mathematical model was created to describe the energy use, costs, and environmental impacts from energy consumption in an automobile assembly painting facility. The model agrees with measured energy consumption data for process heating and electricity demand to within about 15% for one Michigan truck facility from which model input parameters were obtained. Thermal pinch analysis determined an energy conservation target of 58% of paint process energy demand. A heat exchanger network optimization study was conducted in order to determine how closely the network design could achieve this target. The resulting heat exchanger network design was profitable based on a discounted cash flow analysis and may achieve reductions in total corporate energy consumption of up to 16% if implemented corporatewide at a major automobile manufacturer.

Accelerating product development in the automobile industry

Competition in consumer product space demands acceleration of product development. Not only is greater variety demanded by customers, but every model seems destined to a shorter shelf life. Beyond this, the faster pace of regulatory changes adds even greater emphasis. To achieve more rapid product development, organisations have employed many fundamental enablers including: platform concepts allowing more effective leverage of designs; doing work concurrently; reducing the time taken for each task. Major automobile manufacturers have used all these methods for reducing product development time. Tata Motors, the largest automobile firm in India, has also used many of these same levers to accelerate product development. Tata Motors developed a new Sedan Indigo in about 20 months (and subsequently a Station-wagon, Indigo Marina), leveraging the successful Indica platform and manufacturing system. This approach, supported by a formal vehicle development process, concurrent engineering, maths based simulations and a disciplined manufacturing planning activity has been deployed with considerable benefit. The cross-functional teams employed in many stages of the development activity have also promoted organisational learning apart from reducing product development cycle time. Ultimately only the marketplace success of these products, contributing to the financial turnaround of the company, can be viewed as a true measure of the success of these efforts.

Measurement of volatile organic compounds inside automobiles.

The objective of the current study was to evaluate the types and concentrations of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the passenger cabin of selected sedan automobiles under static (parked, unventilated) and specified conditions of operation (i.e., driving the vehicle using air conditioning alone, vent mode alone, or driver's window half open). Data were collected on five different passenger sedan vehicles from three major automobile manufacturers. Airborne concentrations were assessed using 90-min time-weighted average (TWA) samples under U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) Method IP-1B to assess individual VOC compounds and total VOCs (TVOCs) calibrated to toluene. Static vehicle testing demonstrated TVOC levels of approximately 400-800 microg/m(3) at warm interior vehicle temperatures (approximately 80 degrees F), whereas TVOCs at least fivefold higher were observed under extreme heat conditions (e.g., up to 145 degrees F). The profile of most prevalent individual VOC compounds varied considerably according to vehicle brand, age, and interior temperature tested, with predominant compounds including styrene, toluene, and 8- to 12-carbon VOCs. TVOC levels under varied operating conditions (and ventilation) were generally four- to eightfold lower (at approximately 50-160 microg/m(3)) than the static vehicle measurements under warm conditions, with the lowest measured levels generally observed in the trials with the driver's window half open. These data indicate that while relatively high concentrations of certain VOCs can be measured inside static vehicles under extreme heat conditions, normal modes of operation rapidly reduce the inside-vehicle VOC concentrations even when the air conditioning is set on recirculation mode.

ABB set to install all-seeing, all-thinking robots at major car manufacturer

ABB set to install all-seeing, all-thinking robots at major car manufacturer

Hybrid electric vehicles: year 2000 status

In the year 2000, the automotive manufacturers turned their attention to Hybrid Electric Vehicles (HEV). This re-direction of Electric Vehicle (EV) development effort was highlighted at the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS 2000), where, the World's major automobile manufacturers displayed twenty three HEVs. Thirteen HEV were configured with an internal combustion piston engine and electric traction motor, while, ten additional HEV were configured as fuel cell and battery pack hybrid vehicles (FCHV). Furthermore, the FCHV were fueled with hydrogen (H/sub 2/) from H/sub 2/ absorption metal hydride fuel tanks, or, from liquified hydrogen cryogenic fuel tanks. One conclusion for HEV was that the preferred configuration includes a compression ignition engine paired with an electric motor, and, four speed manual transmission with automatic shift. A second conclusion for FCHV was that the fuel of choice is H/sub 2/, and furthermore, these H/sub 2/ fueled FCHV were the precursor vehicles foreshadowing deployment of a hydrogen fuel infrastructure within the first quarter of the 21/sup st/ Century.

Manufacturing cell performance improvement: a simulation study

This paper reports on the study of the “underbody front”-automated welding cell at Opel Belgium, a major automobile manufacturer of General Motors International Operations. It employs the use of simulation in an experimental design framework to identify potential improvements in average daily output through management of buffer sizes at key buffer locations within the cell. Many practical applications of animated computer simulation stop at the modeling and displaying of the process under study. Simulation as a tool for process reengineering or enhancement can only reach its full potential if incorporated in a comprehensive statistical study, so as to attain statistically significant results. The paper also reports on the reactions of, and issues raised by, management when the experimental design methodology was presented as a tool for process enhancement and productivity improvement.