BUILD-TO-ORDER CARS
Made to measure
EU project sets out to help revitalise the car industry with an initiative to build
a vehicle to order in less than a week. Siobhan Wagner reports
MANUFACTURING cars quickly to order
could save the European car industry
billions and safeguard production,
according to an EU project team.
36
The ‘five-day car’ initiative is
exploring how the industry, founded on
the principle of mass production, can
move towards meeting customer needs
better by building a car to order in less
than a week.
Called Intelligent Logistics for
Innovative Product Technologies (ILIPT)
the EU-funded project comprises 27
partners such as Daimler, BMW, Siemens
and SMEs and Bath and Cambridge
universities, and will publish its
findings in June.
‘The automotive industry is already
moving towards this and we could see
cars built this way by 2015,’ said one of
the project leaders, Glenn Parry of Bath
University.
His research team believes that
eventually customers will walk into a car
dealer on a Monday, place an order for a
car, and take delivery of the model with
all of their specifications by Friday.
Rather than following the traditional
practice of manufacturing the body of
the car in a single steel shell, ILIPT is
examining how to build it from a
number of standard, pre-formed modules.
The body frame is subdivided into
four main modular pieces: front end,
engine bay, front greenhouse and rear
greenhouse.
The researchers have developed new
cold joining technologies to stick the car’s
high-performance steel body together
quickly and accurately. Once the body
frame is assembled, the ‘bodywork’
styling surface is attached. The surface
panels may be made from a number of
different pre-coloured thermoplastic or
thermoset plastic materials.
‘People like a shiny car, and with
these materials you can do away with the
paint shop, which reduces production
time,’ said Parry.
The cockpit would also be modular so
it could be quickly assembled to customer
specification.
The project is
examining how to
build car bodies
from a number of
standard,
pre-formed
modules rather
than from a single
steel shell
FutuRe
of automotive technology
‘Traditionally orders come from
dealers, but we want the customer to
place the order,’ said Parry. The order
will be filled out on a computer screen
at the dealership and then the system
will allocate the manufacturer of each
part of the car.
The research team is currently
working on an interoperability model
that will allow the individual software
systems of the dealership,
manufacturer and part suppliers to
work together. That way everything
from a driver’s seat to an engine
can be ordered and manufactured
specifically for a customer’s needs.
Parry said this could significantly
reduce the carbon footprint of car
production because an interoperable
system would locate the closest
manufacturer for each part.
‘This also has economic
benefits for the European and US
markets which have seen increasing
migration of their production
overseas,’ he said. ‘You would have to
have large production facilities in
Europe and the US. And parts
manufacturers would need to be
co-located or geographically located
near the assembly plants to deliver
within time scale.’
Simple, small parts like windscreen
wipers, nuts, bolts or fasteners could
still be manufactured in bulk from
elsewhere and shipped.
‘The car industry is massively
important to Europe,’ said Parry. ‘If it
all went to India [such as Jaguar and
Land Rover] and China it would not
only damage Europe’s economy but
also the society.’
He added that the five-day car
concept is something both consumers
and manufacturers want.
Parry claimed that the potential
savings of £8bn could be passed on to
customers, allowing car makers to
remain competitive during tough
economic conditions.
the EnGIneeR 21 APRIL–4 MAY 2008
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