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Due to the need for a significant reduction in the weight of parts in automotive manufacturing, the use of lightweight materials such as magnesium and aluminium is becoming increasingly important. Unfortunately, these materials are often associated with limited cold formability. Because of this, production of large, complex sheet metal components using forming technology frequently entails greater cost. To extend the application of these materials in manufacturing processes, it is essential to identify strategies which permit improvement of the forming behaviour of these materials. The use of elevated temperatures as a process parameter in forming operations is a strategy which has potential in terms of the search for a solution to counter the aforementioned disadvantages. Firstly, it permits a distinct increase in the ductility and formability of the material. Secondly, it reduces deformation resistance and hence the forming forces and pressures required.

The growing proportion of comfort equipment and electronics in modern vehicles results in the fact that increasingly extensive tests and parameter setting tasks occure at the end of line. With the concept of the end of line tests of today, which means use of highly specialized single test stands, these requirements can no longer be complied with. The trend is towards flexible test stands designed according to the vehicle equipment and the test profile. This results in a test concept in which the tests are no longer carried out by the control of the respective test stand but by the vehicle's ECU. In the first step, this isa mobile test unit which communicates directly with the vehicle's control device and automatically generates test programs which are worked-off with the help of the respective test stand. Apart from performing the test itself, this unit also sets the parameters of the ECU.

Awareness of quality and costs are an important requirement in the automotive manufacturing. New ways have to be found to achieve this goal so that the complex quality assurance at the end of the assembly process can be simplified. Structuring vehicle parts according to the principle of functional modules which themselves can be tested as complete units is a way to achieve this. Documentation of test cycles and their integration into the assembly process results in enormous savings in rework and investment in the end of line. This fact is explained below with the examples “brake system” and “chassis”.