Design of an enhanced process of information exchange in the automotive development system

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Date
2018
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Pontificia Universidad Javeriana Cali
Abstract
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The Decision-making process is a critical success factor for a company and gathering relevant information is a basic requirement to perform it. Transparency, in turn, is the fact of publishing decentralized process and status information that can be used by other processes in order to make optimal decisions. In other words, it is the gap between effectiveness and efficiency [1], [2]. The present project is carried out as a support of a Ph.D. work and takes place in the information exchange process within the product development system of a German company in the automotive industry. Due to the size and the complexity of its operations, the company is currently bearing transparency limitations, which affect directly its capacity of making optimal decisions. Therefore, it incurs additional and unforeseen costs that add up along the development system. For example, in 2016 it was necessary to invest an amount of 5.44 million euros in changes to the length of a developing vehicle since it could not roll through the production lines because of collision with the facility pillars [3]. If the data of the production facilities had been transparent and taken into account, quite likely, that investment would not have been required or it would have been possible to make a design decision aware of the procedural and economic consequences. Accordingly, the project purposes a more holistic and synchronized approach of the development process from the view of concurrent engineering and the support of a proper digitalization, in order to ensure that facility data is available to developers and decisive stakeholders earlier in the developing process. Thus, the company is able to reduce the developing cycles, therewith avoiding additional costs and mainly having a product development which is suitable for production and achieves a higher maturity level according to the new time challenges of the development process.
Keywords
Transparency, Engineering change management, Decision-making process, Concurrent engineering, Digitalization.
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