Achieving world-class perceived vehicle quality through improved engineering and manufacturing tools

Abstract

Throughout the vehicle development process, automotive manufacturers must work to meet a variety of customer needs. One increasingly important attribute is vehicle exterior perceived quality, which is largely dependent on how well exterior parts fit together. Before vehicles are produced and sold to customers, manufacturers utilize several processes and tools to "tune in" vehicle exteriors. This thesis examines one manufacturer's approach to delivering vehicle exterior quality, including a recent change initiative to improve the tune in process. The overall vehicle development process is introduced, and then detail is provided for areas of the process that relate closely to vehicle exteriors. Two areas that are explored in depth are the manufacturer's tune in build strategy and a new exterior fitting fixture implementation. An assessment of build strategy is provided and a framework is proposed. The framework is based on functional build theory and Key Characteristic (KC) chains. Functional build is a process to ensure that the vehicle exterior meets specifications while allowing engineering teams to determine the best way to solve dimensional problems, which may or may not include forcing a component in the assembly to design intent.

(cont.) A KC chain analysis is one way to view how vehicle exterior requirements relate to each other and engineering organizational structure. Viewing build strategies with these two techniques illustrates how build decisions are impacted by organizational and technical complexity, as well as material rigidity. At an automotive manufacturer, several fitting fixtures are used during the tune in process. An initiative to implement a new fitting fixture is assessed. Both technical and organizational issues are addressed. The conclusion of this thesis is that several factors that are both organizational and technical must be considered in order to gain the benefit of the new fitting fixture. Some of the major factors include: build strategy alignment with the fixture, learning systems to support continuous improvement, and organizational leadership and ownership aligned to quickly solve problems.