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The increasing rates of violence and the lack of effective public security policies, especially in large urban areas in developing countries, have reflected directly in the automotive civil armor market, making Brazil the world leader in the segment of ballistic protection type III-A level against handguns according to the NIJ 0108.01 standard [1], followed by Mexico. Faced with this scenario, to speed up the armoring process on brand new automobiles, the armoring companies have adopted shop floor procedures to quickly assembly the ballistic protection parts, without considering automotive design engineering and manufacturing criteria of the vehicle. One of the solutions for improving the quality of this process and optimizing costs is the adoption of the DFMA® tool, Design for Manufacturing and Assembly.

Brazil for more than two decades is the largest producer of civilian armored vehicles in the world, where in 2018 almost 12,000 new vehicles received this type of protection in the country, contributing to an estimated armored fleet reaching almost 220 thousand units. In 2019, there was an estimated growth of between 20% and 25% compared to the previous year, where premium segment vehicles characterize the majority of civilian armored vehicles. In this context, this paper presents an overview, in the country, of the main models of civilian vehicles that are armored at ballistic protection type III-A level against handguns, according to the NIJ 0108.01 standard, from the National Institute of Justice of the United States. In this sense, just as automakers adopt DFM and DFA, Design for Manufacturing and Design for Assembly, as part of their vehicle developments, the purpose of this paper is to present and propose the addition of DFAr, Design for Armoring in premium vehicle projects.

Brazil is the largest civilian armored vehicle market in the world with more than 16,000 new protected units produced in 2018, followed by Mexico with 7,000 automobiles, according to Brazilian Army (BA) data. In this context, this paper presents an overview of Brazilian market for civilian vehicle armoring, definitions and characteristics of transparent and opaque ballistic resistance protective materials according to U. S. Department of Justice, the National Institute of Justice, NIJ Standard 0108.01. Based on this premises, the paper addresses basic technical requirements for ballistic safety in design and process to guarantee minimum quality of armoring services. The purpose of this paper is to safeguard the original features and functionality of the automotive components while simultaneously providing recommended ballistic protection of the vehicle with quality.

A decade and a half after its conception, Open Innovation (OI) is still a growing topic in the academic community. The automotive industry, however, is no stranger to the subject and activities that are now known as OI practices have been an integral part to automotive new product development activities for decades. The purpose of the present study is to analyze how open innovation occurs in the automotive industry and to compare exploratory results between Brazil's and France's automaker industries. The study introduces a brief literature review concerning the topics of Product Development Process (PDP) and OI, paving the path towards the analyzed constructs. The chosen research approach was that of a survey, with 57 responses from Brazilian automakers and 15 from French.

The competition among automotive industries increases each year worldwide. Among their diverse needs, what can be highlighted are: market expansion, model diversification, competitive prices, customer-recognized quality, new products release in shorter time periods, among others. The occurrence of flaws that might compromise the health or safety of the product’s user is admittedly one of the largest issues for any manufacturer, especially if these flaws are identified after its commercialization (recall). In this work, a study on recall in the automotive industry in the Brazilian market will be presented, comprising the years of 2013 and 2014. Reasons and causes of recall are addressed, based on the sample of the aforementioned research, with special emphasis on flaws derived from the production process. The conclusion at the end of the work is that the final assembly in the automotive manufacturing process is what requires more attention from engineering area.

Automotive industries are undergoing a transformation of their manufacturing systems. Called by the German government as Industrie 4.0, this transformation is based on the evolution of traditional Embedded Systems-ES to Cyber-Physical Systems-CPS. In the next years such evolution will have to reach transitory stages, where ES and CPS should coexist for a determined period of time (ES-CPS). Based on this projection, this work compares ES with CPS, identifies the main differences between these systems and thus forms a transitory stage of automotive manufacturing for the next years. The work is structured as follows: Introduction section places the reader on the treated subject and presents the methodology of the work. Later, Industrie 4.0, Embedded Systems (ES) and Cyber-Physical systems (CPS) are defined. Once this is done, the analysis of ES-CPS transition is finished. Analysis results are presented and a representation of ES-CPS transition is proposed.

The competition among automotive industries increases each year worldwide. Traditional industries as well as traditional markets end up becoming the target for expansion of new global industries. It can be stated that automotive industries dedicate special attention to lean thinking and Toyota Production System (TPS). This attention is not by chance as, in doing so, these companies obtain competitive advantages over their competitors, such as: improved profitability, higher negotiation margin, the possibility of applying lower selling prices of their products, among others. This study aims to present several waste examples, as well as many activities that regularly occur within the production process of automotive industries (some both in product and process design). These activities form part of the final cost of the vehicle although without adding value to the final product for the customer.

The Digital Factory (DF) can be defined as a set of computational software applied in the manufacturing design, development, implementation and operation. The goal of this work is to investigate DF's available resources in the analysis of workforce and machinery required for changes in the production scenarios in a determined automobile model. Therefore, a theoretical framework is developed. Afterwards, there is an investigation of the resources available for this application, actually commercialized by the three main software supply companies for DF. The results of the research are presented and discussed. Suggestions for future developments are identified, and the work is finished with the pertinent considerations.

The automotive industry has been increasingly researching and working on improving vehicle and passenger safety over the years. Following countries such as the United States and European Union, the Brazilian government has been publishing many resolutions with the objective of improving the safety of their fleet. With the publication of resolution 312 from CONTRAN (National Traffic Counsel), on April 3rd, 2009, the installation of ABS (Anti-lock Brake System) feature has become mandatory for all car and truck models to be sold in Brazil, following a staggered implementation starting on January 1st, 2010. The ABS system adds to the vehicle's current brake system, not allowing the wheels to lock during braking, which helps preserve the vehicle's stability and improve its safety, thus avoiding accidents. The technology, which is already available in a few car models, is not yet developed for the heavy trucks applications in this market.

Concurrent engineering principles have been almost universally adopted as the ideal solution to the reduction in time for products development. Even with concurrency practice, the lack of interaction among the professionals is still present in some stages of the product development process (PDP). This lack of interaction, or gap, may be observed in the three macro-phases of PDP: macro-phase of product strategy (PS); macro-phase of product and process development (PPD); macro-phase of production and continuous improvement (PCI). The present work aims to propose a methodology, denominated Technical Interface (TI), as an aid to automotive product development process (Automotive-PDP). This methodology can contribute to the engineering departments in charge of PS; PPD and PCI for the update and preservation of technical information about product; process, and production, during all the Automotive-PDP.

The vacuum forming process for plastic parts is used to manufacture packages as well as any kind of industrial appliance for a range of sectors, including the automotive industry. This diversity of uses is due to the attractive cost of the process. In the automotive industry, it is a big ally, used as an alternative process in the manufacture of prototype parts. This occurs not only because of the reduction in the time to obtain the part, but also the technical opportunity of product development allowed by this process due to the material that can be used. Some analyses and developments would not be possible if the part were manufactured using the material specified by the part design. This paper shows how the vacuum forming process can facilitate the development of automotive vehicles, as well as a simple and fast way to manufacture vacuum formed parts, which allows parts to be obtained by any kind of industry.

Competition among car makers increases each day, as such companies look forward to launching new vehicle models which meet the different consumer niche. As a result, developing different vehicles simultaneously is a market requirement, and doing so might lead to increased production costs in case no appropriate developing and launching strategy is applied. Upon this scenario, the platform strategy has been a practice among car makers for decades and has promoted both standardization and reuse of vehicle components and systems. The most recent global architecture strategy has been used by some of the world car makers, combining communization and standardization to increased flexibility if compared to the conventional platform, which represents a higher number of derivative vehicles as well. The objective of this work is to identify the relevant variables taken into consideration when selecting an appropriate strategy for developing a new global vehicle.

This work was motivated by the specific needs of a materials flow and packing planning sector (PFME), within a manufacturing engineering department of a vehicle assembly company in Brazil. In this sector, there is a growing need to obtain prototype parts in the shortest time and at the lowest cost possible in order to carry out static prototype tests of the special packing and transportation racks used in this company, since these racks need to be ready to assist the preparation phase of the series production of the vehicle. The objective of this work is to survey the academic theory and the existing literature in order to find an application proposal of rapid prototyping (RP) techniques to make the parts used in the rack tests, thus reducing time and acquisition costs.

The fulfillment of the strict market requirements for customers in the “off-road” vehicles segment is crucial to increase the value and reliability of the products and services available by a manufacturer of heavy-duty vehicles. The need for a product that meets these demands becomes an outstanding factor of a manufacturer, since it provides active customer care services, aiming at the preventive and/or corrective “in loco” maintenance for its vehicles and equipment. This work proposal encompasses the development, manufacturing and management, by its dealers, of a remote maintenance unit (RMU), customized and configured with all the equipment required to support active maintenance services, both preventive and corrective, in the operation/work region of the customer. Thus, the target is the minimization of the running time of its vehicles and/or equipment to the nearest service station, or even of the wait time for concluding a service.

Most multinational companies have searched for cooperation within their units around the world when developing global products. To achieve this goal, those companies are making use of project teams whose members are geographically dispersed and culturally diverse. That context introduces more complexity to project management techniques especially on what concerns the communication among the project staff. Based on a bibliography research, this work intends to analyze how communication is affected by transnational context, what the importance of communication is to reach the project goals, and how it is possible to coordinate and communicate activities and information throughout multicultural and dispersed project members.

Fiberglass laminated parts are used in automotive industry, especially for limited quantities of parts production. They are useful on prototypes and special vehicles, among other things. If the parts are not laminated with required quality, the result can jeopardize the vehicle parts application. This paper shows a simple manner of vacuum bagging process application for fiberglass and carbon fiber parts lamination with dimensional and surface quality required. It also shows the mould fabrication process and its importance to the laminated parts quality.

In the automotive industries, time and parts production costs are fundamental, mainly in prototyping production. The RTV (Room Temperature Vulcanized) process is an important alternative production to flexible silicone molds when you need to inject polyurethane parts. The objective is time reduction in tooling production and parts. RTV requires notable initial investments in equipments. Many times, this cost does not fit in the automotive third part company's budget. This work shows how is possible to obtain parts by RTV process with excellent quality, without high investments in equipments and without quality loss in produced parts. Lead times and tooling and parts costs are analyzed. Due to equipments low costs, this alternative is accessible not only to automotive industries but also to small and medium suppliers.

In the early 1990s, Brazilian automotive industries have testified a new scenario with a competitiveness increased due to the establishment of foreign companies, which forced them to follow new strategies to maintain its competitiveness in the market. Innovation and quality become priority, as well as new technologies and product cost optimization. More specifically, the focus on current automotive products cost reduction is nowadays one of the most important strategies to provide significant increase in profits and market share of companies. The purpose of this paper is to introduce case studies and the technical and economical benefits of product optimization process applied in current automotive components, where the requirements of quality maintenance, performance and cost reductions are emphasized.

The existent competitiveness in the automobile industry has been taking their manufacturers to an incessant search for methods and processes that seek the production of vehicles with quality and accessible costs to their costumers. The Vehicle Development Process (VDP) became an essential element for the success of a vehicle in the market, because the companies found out that, when concentrating their efforts during the development phase, the opportunities for product improvement will be much less onerous when compared with the costs spent when the vehicle are already in production. On the other hand, those improvement opportunities are evidently more difficult of be pointed during VDP than when the vehicle is already in production. This article aims to evaluate how the Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) methodology can be applied to the vehicle development process in order to provide significant results in terms of quality improvement, cost optimization and reduction of development timing.