Modeling design changes in vehicle assembly systems : platform transition strategies and manufacturing flexibility

Driven by rising environmental and geopolitical concerns, regulations have been put in place over the last decade to compel car makers to lower the CO2 emissions of their cars. Due to these increasingly stringent vehicle efficiency standards, considerable effort has been expended to reduce vehicle fuel consumption. Since the mass of the vehicle dominates all of these efforts, it can be argued that future emission requirements will be impossible to achieve with steel vehicle structures. A transition to lightweight, non-steel materials seems inevitable. However, non-steel materials in most cases require dedicated manufacturing systems due to specific manufacturing requirements. Thus, lightweight vehicle systems will require a distinct divergence between today's manufacturing environment and the potential future manufacturing system. While many studies have assessed greenfield production costs for conventional vehicles and the lightweight alternative, this research recognizes an important reality of the automobile marketplace: any future lightweight vehicle will be implemented out of a steel-based manufacturing environment. Carmakers will have to adapt existing plant infrastructure to the particular requirements of the non-ferrous material. This research develops a conceptual framework and a transition cost model to quantify change penalties of transition processes imposed on vehicle assembly systems. This transition model is applied to a case study provided by Ford Motor Company in order to better understand implications of different manufacturing strategies on the system's capability of switching materials. The research identifies three different manufacturing change penalties which have to be paid when switching the base material in vehicle assembly systems. Taking these penalties into account, case studies suggest when, to what extent, and how materials transitions can be realized most cost-effectively. Partial component-wise transitions are presented as an attractive alternative to full material transitions. Finally, strategies are proposed how to increase the material flexibility of automotive manufacturing systems.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2014

Author dc:creator

• Wüstemeyer, Christoph

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Richard Roth and Frank R. Field, III.

• Materials Science and Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/95870

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/95870