UESP starts European Project AC/DC
The Manufacturing Systems Engineering Unit (UESP) started the European project AC/DC - Automotive Chassis Development for 5-Days Cars.
15th November 2006
The prime objective of “AC-DC” project is to develop a concept which
radically enhances automotive manufacturing in order to achieve the high level of responsiveness required for a 5-Days car process according to customer specifications.
In order to achieve this ambitious goal, a highly promising new collaboration process is created: the “individual & highly reactive planning loops in the supply chain”. Since the guarantee of delivery by 100% must be maintained at any rate, a critical path recovery tool (“Fail-Save Real-Time Event Management”) is introduced, which comprises a toolbox of measures that can be put in force to cure any disturbance within a tolerance time-span and relative to its degree of severity.
The efficiency of this future system can only be validated realistically if it
considers the emerging „step-change in component technology“ (technology
convergence of „Mechatronics“ for customer neutral modules of high
parametrization). Therefore, AC-DC enables the automotive supply chain to advance from traditional hierarchic manufacturing towards a knowledge-based concurrent process that increases industrial capacity, reduces stocks and allows last moment configuration of new products in higher variations and
quality and at lower costs.
This is an IP project of great dimension and with the duration of four years, involving two fundamental workpackages, one referring to the project and configuration of an automotive chassis, flexible and another one referring to the dynamic supply network management. It is in such component that the project develops an innovative concept of collaborative management, aiming to radically alter the conventional deadlines and to create a highly reactive “5- Days capable”
system that cuts down inventories in the supply network.
AC-DC develops the requisite „dynamic supply chain collaboration concept” that promotes the conventional automotive terms of delivery (6 months planning followed by committed commissioning volumes with 6 weeks lead time and a ten days stand-by capacity) to a highly reactive “5- Days capable” system that cuts down inventories in the supply network.
Importantly, AC DC maintains the 100 % guarantee of delivery as an
uncompromised constraint. Leaving hierarchic production concepts behind bybuilding on multiple planning loops the dynamic supply network management is an ideal test case for the integration of both the requisite high-techmodule technology and the appropriate process configuration features. All aspects of complementary concern, such as “fail-save realtime event management”, “collaborative demand prediction” and “planning consistency”, “modular production technology processes”, as well as “distributed quality control and testing” are crucial building blocks to form the dynamic and reliable supply loops network.
Professor Jorge Pinho de Sousa will coordinate INESC Porto’s participation in the project that will focus on tasks related to this dynamic supply network management and that should involve the adoption of innovative computer systems. César Toscano and Luis Carneiro, among others, will also be involved in this project.
The leader of the project is Continental Teves AG and several industrial companies like BMW, Volkswagen, Siemens, ZF and Autoliv are a part of it. Apart from INESC Porto, there are other partners like CARTIF, Commissariat Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique, ERPC, Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, UNIMORE, VDIVDE-IT, ATB, MTA SZTAKI, Mandator , CERTH and University of Paderborn.
BIP November 2006