New trends and developments in automotive industry

NEW TRENDS AND

DEVELOPMENTS IN

AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY

Edited by Marcello Chiaberge

New Trends and Developments in Automotive Industry

Edited by Marcello Chiaberge

Published by InTech

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Copyright © 2011 InTech

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Image Copyright Blaz Kure, 2010. Used under license from Shutterstock.com

First published January, 2011

Printed in India

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Additional hard copies can be obtained from [email protected]

New Trends and Developments in Automotive Industry, Edited by Marcello Chiaberge

p. cm.

ISBN 978-953-307-999-8

free online editions of InTech

Books and Journals can be found at

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Part 1

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Part 2

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Preface IX

Industrial Production Technology 1

Data Mining and Intelligent Agents for Supporting

Mass Customization in the Automotive Industry 3

Efthimia Mavridou, Dimitrios Tzovaras, Evangelos Bekiaris,

Pavlos Spanidis, Maria Gemou and George Hassapis

Automotive Testing

in the German-Dutch Wind Tunnels 17

Eddy Willemsen, Kurt Pengel, Herman Holthusen,

Albert Küpper, et al

Monitoring and Fault Diagnosis in Manufacturing

Processes in the Automotive Industry 33

Roberto Arnanz Gómez, María A. Gallego de Santiago,

Aníbal Reñones Domínguez, Javier Rodríguez Nieto

and Sergio Saludes Rodil

Industrial System Production 59

The Concurrent Role of Professional Training

and Operations Management: Evidences

from the After-Sales Services Information

Systems Architecture in the Automotive Sector 61

Nouha Taifi and Giuseppina Passiante

Human Factors, Ergonomics Model and Application

in Automotive Industries: Focus on Job Satisfaction 79

Siti Zawiah Md Dawal, Zubaidah Ismail, and Zahari Taha

A Sustainable Service Program

for the Automotive Refinishing Industry 89

Andrea Zavala, Rafael Moure-Eraso,

Nora Munguía and Luis Velázquez

Contents

VI Contents

An Analysis of the Automaker-Systemist Supplier

Relationship in an Automotive Industrial Condominium 107

Mário Sacomano Neto and Sílvio R. I. Pires

Strategic Priorities and Lean Manufacturing Practices

in Automotive Suppliers. Ten Years After. 123

Juan A. Marin-Garcia and Tomas Bonavia

Identifying and Prioritizing Ecodesign

Key Factors for the Automotive Industry 137

Miriam Borchardt, Miguel Afonso Sellitto, Giancarlo Medeiros

Pereira, Leonel Augusto Calliari Poltosi and Luciana Paulo Gomes

Context Analysis for Situation Assessment

in Automotive Applications 161

L. Ciardelli, A. Beoldo and C. Regazzoni

New Concept in Automotive Manufacturing:

A System-based Manufacturing 177

Mohammad A. Omar

Industrial Machinery and Tools 191

Tomography Visualization Methods

for Monitoring Gases in the Automotive Systems 193

Krzysztof Polakowski

FlexLean - Flexible Automation

for Automotive Body Assembly 209

Sven Soetebier, Nicolas Mauser, Fabrice Legeleux and Sönke Kock

Design Developments 221

Sustainable Design of Automotive Components through Jute

Fiber Composites: An Integrated Approach 223

Cristiano Alves, Arlindo Silva, Luis Reis,

Paulo Ferrão and Manuel Freitas

Are Skill Design Structure Matrices New Tools

for Automotive Design Managers? 255

Jean-Pierre Micaëlli and Éric Bonjour

Materials: Analysis and Improvements 265

Effects of Environmental Conditions

on Degradation of Automotive Coatings 267

Mohsen Mohseni, Bahram Ramezanzadeh and Hossain Yari

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Part 3

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Part 4

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Part 5

Chapter 16

Modern Automotive Gear Oils

- Classification, Characteristics, Market Analysis,

and Some Aspects of Lubrication 297

Waldemar Tuszynski, Remigiusz Michalczewski,

Witold Piekoszewski and Marian Szczerek

Development of a New 3D Nonwoven

for Automotive Trim Applications 323

Nicole Njeugna, Laurence Schacher, Dominique C. Adolphe,

Jean-Baptiste Schaffhauser and Patrick Strehle

Automotive Catalysts: Performance,

Characterization and Development 347

Nelcy Della Santina Mohallem,

Marcelo Machado Viana and Ronald A. Silva

Materials in Automotive Application,

State of the Art and Prospects 365

Elaheh Ghassemieh

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Preface

The automotive industry is experiencing a considerable “stress period”, which can lead

to important changes in the whole industry. Many aspects contribute to this situa￾tion, starting from the global recession (unemployment rates, slowing growth, etc.) to

credit meltdown (dependency of car sales on credit, OEM refi nancing, etc.) and fi nish￾ing with globalization aspects (global sourcing, foreign investments, etc.) and “green

challenges” (both for the industry and the fi nal products).

Moreover, the global market developments are infl uencing the whole automotive in￾dustry in diff erent fi elds (volumes, technologies, regional aspects), while the environ￾mental compatibility of car power-trains will lead to huge investments needs for the

innovation of many diff erent technologies.

In this complex scenario, regional environmental regulations (both on production pro￾cess and on fi nal product) will have great infl uence on further technological develop￾ments. For example, Japan and Europe are world leaders with the most severe stan￾dards in terms of gas, fuel and oil economy, while other emerging economies are facing

right now this kind of problem. This obviously means that the approaching techniques

to new vehicle standards are quite diff erent, and emission targets and measures vary

heavily depending also on industry/consumers incentives that will play a big role in

the future E-mobility scenario.

In this new scenario the automotive industry will not only be characterized by original

and historical OEMs, but entirely new players will enter this industry area. Non-OEM

players will introduce skills related to information systems and connectivity, new com￾ponents, new systems or innovation related to energy supply in order to provide solu￾tions directly connected with the end customer (just think about electric vehicles).

Customers are becoming the main factor of this small “revolution” that will lead OEMs

to defeat their original market position and will be placed at the same level of standard

suppliers in order to provide new solutions for the fi nal customer. A clear example

of this new perspective is the E-mobility scenario, where common projects between

OEMs and power suppliers are driving innovation and new products.

In this new perspective, diff erent solutions will help OEMs to innovate this impor￾tant industry and to face the challenges that new markets, regulations, standards

and technologies are introducing. The possible areas of interest will span from en￾gine cooperation, platform and process sharing, development of new business fi elds,

X Preface

to joint ventures with electric companies and important strategic partnerships with

suppliers.

This book is divided in fi ve main parts (production technology, system production,

machinery, design and materials) and tries to show emerging solutions in automotive

industry fi elds related to OEMs and no-OEMs sectors in order to show the vitality of

this leading industry for worldwide economies and related important impacts on other

industrial sectors and their environmental sub-products.

Thanks to KPMG for important data and industrial analysis.

Marcello Chiaberge

Mechatronics Laboratory – Politecnico di Torino

Italy

Part 1

Industrial Production Technology

1

Data Mining and Intelligent Agents for

Supporting Mass Customization in the

Automotive Industry

Efthimia Mavridou1,3, Dimitrios Tzovaras1, Evangelos Bekiaris2,

Pavlos Spanidis2, Maria Gemou2 and George Hassapis3

1Informatics and Telematics Institute, Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, 6th km

Charilaou – Thermi Rd., P.O. Box: 60361, P.C.: 57001, Thermi, Thessaloniki, 2Hellenic Institute of Transport, Centre for Research and Technology Hellas, 6th km

Charilaou – Thermi Rd., P.O. Box: 60361, P.C.: 57001, Thermi, Thessaloniki,

3Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Aristotle

University of Thessaloniki, P.C.:54124 , Thessaloniki,

Greece

1. Introduction

Mass customisation has been said to be the new frontier in business competition (Pine,

1992). The objective of mass customisation is to deliver goods and services that meet

individual customers’ needs with near mass production efficiency (Tseng & Jiao, 2001).

Currently, only few automotive industries have deployed mass customisation systems in

their product design and manufacturing processes. In the current paper, we present such a

mass customization system, designed as an agent-oriented architecture which proposes to

the vehicle customers (of car and truck segments) personalised vehicle configurations

according to their personal affective needs.

Design for performance (i.e. functional design) and design for usability (i.e. ergonomic

design) no longer empower a competitive edge because product technologies turn to be

mature, or competitors can quickly catch up (Khalid & Helander, 2004). Affective design has

become very important in prescribing that designed objects have a meaning that goes

beyond their functional needs (Khalid et al., 2006). Customers actively seek design features

that are important for their emotional satisfaction, and vehicle design must therefore

address customer affective needs. Affective needs are defined as user requirements for a

specific product, driven by emotions, sentiments and attitudes (Khalid et al., 2006).

Understanding customer affective needs is important to ensure a good fit of affective and

functional requirements to design parameters.

Several pieces of research have been presented for supporting affective design such as

Kansei engineering which has been well recognized as a technique of translating consumers’

subjective impressions about a product into design elements (Nagamashi, 1989). (Ishihara et

al., 1995) apply neural network techniques to enhance the inference between Kansei words

and design elements in Kansei design systems. (Matsubara & Nagamachi. 1997) propose to