Impact of technology readiness in the development of automotive systems when incorporating new styling : a graph theory approach to OPM hierarchical decomposition of the system's architecture

Abstract

This thesis addresses to find whether technology readiness, while developing a system of new derivative vehicles, has an influence on the time required to design a part that involves styling and engineering activities. For doing so Styling Level and Technology Readiness were identified as independent variables, whereas Styling Iterations and Styling Iterations Time were designated as the dependent variables. In this case, the tools used to confirm correlation among variables were simple and multiple linear regressions. As it will be further detailed, Styling Iterations Time had the highest response to Technology Readiness while the rest of variables had no significant correlation on time duration for Studio and Engineering design activities. Based on hypothesis results and using OPM hierarchical decomposition, relations between processes and objects were analyzed at a given design state in order to evaluate complete matching relying on bipartite graphs and Hall's Marriage theorem. In addition, it was outlined how to identify delayed processes that fail to coexist due to a low technology readiness at a given design state using the Four-Colour theorem and elaborating about the application of chromatic number and polynomials to the OPM system's architecture. The system of interest was the headlamps system developed under Ford Global Product Development System (GPDS) using the Global Exterior Lighting Plan (PDP).