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Part of the process for manufacturing polymer panels for exterior vehicle skin involves removing, forming, and sanding panel parting lines. This function is critical due to customer appearance expectations and painting requirements. Several issues including ergonomic and environmental concerns have made automation of this process attractive. Applying parting line design changes and force control technology, a robotic system has been developed to perform this finishing operation automatically. The benefits of this process include part to part consistency, a fifty percent reduction in cycle time and significant process cost reductions.

Information on the philosophy of lean production is readily available, the difficulty is implementing a system to accomplish those principles while obtaining tangible and useful results. Production monitoring and feedback systems provide a method of quantifying these principles to allow manufactures to gain insight into their manufacturing process. With this knowledge, manufacturers can increase their efficiencies and reduce overall production costs. The proper Production Monitoring and Feedback System can give manufacturers the tool they need to implement “lean production” principles while providing quantifiable results in measuring the success of their increased productivity. An outline is presented to implement and quantify Lean Production Concepts and achieve better communication, teamwork, and elimination of waste by properly monitoring production activity and providing real time feedback.

A program of improved cost based on increased equipment performance and productivity. Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) is a critical tool in an effective shop floor management program. By controlling equipment performance and improving equipment uptime, TPM has a direct influence on corporate financial performance. TPM starts with the operator understanding the equipment objectives and capabilities, learning the equipment performance requirements and establishing an on going system of improved uptime, controlled costs and equipment maintenance. This session will present an overview of the 5 steps in TPM, task transfer and potential savings. Also included will be a review of the Component Assembly Plant at Nissan Motor Manufacturing Corporation USA TPM procedure and its effect on the shop floor and production/maintenance work force.

The Saturn Productivity Center has been designed, developed, and implemented to aid in providing economical production through efficient material presentation and flexible equipment. The center is significant in that it is a foundation of the Saturn Production System utilizing lean tooling principles. These principles allow industry the flexibility to not only employ efficient fabrication techniques, but also capitalize on the cost effectiveness of recycling. This manuscript will detail the key concepts of the Saturn Productivity Center including lean tooling definitions, advantages, and an efficient implementation strategy designed around a team concept environment within the manufacturing industry.

The Maintenance and Reliability Center (MRC) at The University of Tennessee, performs research and applies cutting-edge technology to help its member companies reduce losses caused by equipment downtime. The first MRC research project dealt with the precision alignment of rotating machinery. Controlled experiments were performed at The University of Tennessee and at the Oak Ridge Center for Electrical Machinery System Testing to clearly discern what relationships exist between motor misalignment and motor efficiency. The results of these tests show no significant correlation between misalignment and changes in efficiency when the tested couplings were operated within the manufacturer's recommended range. On-going research is investigating the relationship between alignment and bearing load.

Automation in manufacturing is not a new idea. Automation remained simple until computers became available. The design, deployment, and utilization of cheap, simple automation became a lost art. We have begun to rediscover this art-“low cost automation,” or LCA, at NMMC. There is no textbook definition of LCA. One must consider LCA versus high-cost automation (HCA) from the perspective of the budget approval process, anticipated life cycle, complexity of control mechanism, and whether it is a general- or specific-purpose item. There isn't a specific dollar figure as a cutoff. HCA is a capital spending item. LCA shouldn't be. Low cost also refers to the life cycle maintenance costs of the item. HCA items may fill a wide variety of applications over a long life cycle. An LCA device at the end of its utilization cycle would be recycled for use in next-generation LCA applications. The true LCA device has a very simple guidance or control system, or even none at all.

Automotive designers have the greatest influence on the environmental impacts of the production, use, and disposal of the automobile through their design choices. This paper surveys the use of tools for environmental design in the automotive industry and also presents preliminary results of the development and demonstration of a new Life-Cycle Design Toolkit for automotive designers developed by the University of Tennessee Center for Clean Products and Clean Technologies in partnership with the Saturn Corporation and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

As a part of the Global Green Engineering Initiative at the US-Japan Center for Technology Management at Vanderbilt University, an Internet-based Environmentally Conscious Decision Support tool (EcoDS) has been developed for life-cycle management. EcoDS is used to compare different alternatives for manufacturing processes or product designs with regards to cost and residual risk, and includes a user-defined value system. This tool uses a vertical streamlining approach applied prior to the data input, to reduce data collection efforts and to speed the life-cycle assessment process. The output is condensed into a single summary matrix. It has been deemed useful to create a version of EcoDS designed specifically for the automotive industry (AutoEcoDS). This program will involve multiple modules each related to a different aspect of the manufacture of automobiles and automotive products.

Saturn Strategy: To manage environmental issues throughout the product lifecycle…from design through post-consumer disposal. In 1993 Saturn began a focused effort to understand the strengths and weaknesses of a U.S. based closed-loop captive recycling program. This study conducted during a 12-month period (February 1993-February 1994) with 17 participating Saturn Retailers nationwide proved that a captive closed-loop process was feasible. During that period front and rear vehicle fascias were returned via the Saturn transportation system to Spring Hill, Tennessee, where they were ground and reused in vehicle wheelliners of the Saturn vehicle. That program was expanded to all Saturn Retailers in 1994 and continues with a high degree of success today. With the infrastructure to support this effort two other plastic commodities await introduction in the system.

This paper provides a qualitative overview of the environmental aspects of the Lost Foam casting process. The paper divides the subject into the following major environmental media: solid waste, air emissions, wastewater, and energy consumption. Within each of these major areas, the significant materials used in the process and the significant wastes or emissions generated are discussed, along with disposal methods and control strategies. The paper will demonstrate that the Lost Foam casting is an environmentally friendlier process than other competitive casting processes. Many of the direct materials used in the process and much of the solid waste generated can be recycled. The air emissions occur in a few localized areas and can be easily captured and controlled. The majority of the wastewater generated is relatively clean and easily treated. Finally, the energy consumption of the process is briefly discussed.

Training is an essential element for any manufacturer to successfully implement Lean Manufacturing (LM). The University of Tennessee has developed training modules for small to medium sized manufacturers who typically have a more difficult time allocating resources to training. The methodology for developing the LM modules and the results of presenting these modules in pilot sessions and in training sessions are presented.

A program for defining and tracking Quality, Cost, Delivery and Safety performance. In any manufacturing environment, understanding and controlling the shop floor process is vital. Effective shop floor management begins with understanding your current process and establishing clear objectives of what you want to accomplish. This presentation will outline the steps necessary to implement an effective shop floor management program. It is based on the shop floor management activities established by the Stamping Plant at Nissan Motor Manufacturing Corporation USA. Included in this presentation will be an overview of Shop Floor Management at NMMC with a focus on practices and procedures for effective process control, problem response and countermeasure and visual/policy management.

Shifts in the automotive marketplace from price based competition to value added competition (such as quality, short delivery lead time and product variety) have increased the need for developing effective final assembly sequencing methods. Further, recent trends such as component modularity, and high frequency just-in-time deliveries tightened the operational linkages in the supply chain between the assembly plants and suppliers. These factors contribute to the need for not only developing effective assembly schedules, but also developing methods to eliminate the deviations from the planned sequence. In this paper, we identify and discuss major issues (such as quality, load smoothing in the final assembly line, leveling material requirements from suppliers, and operational economies resulting from batching operations) to be considered in developing final assembly schedules.

A method of reducing cumulative trauma injuries based on ergonomic job rotation In today's growing global market many companies are implementing activities to improve productivity and employee performance in order to produce more saleable value per employee. Because of increased performance many of these improvement activities have led to higher injury rates based on repetitive cumulative trauma. This session will deal with understanding the role and effects of ergonomics on the shop floor. It will demonstrate how to analyze each job based on ergonomic effects, categorize those jobs and develop a job rotation schedule based on simple ergonomics, which will allow operators recovery time from cumulative repetitive motion.

After a brief introduction to thermal infrared imaging, this paper will discuss thermal imaging directly related to applications within the automotive industry. The applications will be those that are known today and future application of infrared technology.

With the introduction of the New Beetle, Volkswagen is offering the next generation of the 1.9l TDI engine. Several evolutionary changes have been made to the TDI concept to further improve its emissions, efficiency and performance. Emissions performance is improved with increased fuel injection pressure, optimized fuel injectors, calibration modifications, EGR cooling and reduced crevice volume in the combustion chamber. Efficiency is improved with new oil pump, vacuum pump and water pump drive systems and the elimination of an auxiliary driveshaft. Performance and efficiency is improved with the addition of a variable geometry turbocharger, which increases torque at lower engine speeds while preserving performance at higher engine speeds. This paper describes the many enhancements found in this latest generation TDI and gives a brief lookout to the future trends in diesel engine development such as a high pressure injection system with unit injectors.

Heavy-duty vehicles account for approximately 30 percent of the oxides of nitrogen (NOx) and 65 percent of the particulate matter (PM) emissions from the entire California on-road fleet, despite the fact that these vehicles comprise only 2 percent of the same. To meet legislative mandates to reduce excess smoke emissions from in-use heavy-duty diesel-powered vehicles, the Air Resources Board (ARB or Board) adopted, in December 1997, amendments to the regulations governing the operation and enforcement of the Heavy-Duty Vehicle Inspection Program (HDVIP or the “roadside” program) and the Periodic Smoke Inspection Program (PSIP or the “fleet” program). The initial roadside program was adopted in November 1990 in response to Senate Bill (SB) 1997 (stat. 1988, ch. 1544, Presley), and enforced from 1991 to 1993. It was suspended in October 1993, when the Board redirected staff to investigate reformulated fuels issues.

The heat treatment of steel parts is an essential step in the manufacturing of high-performance components for a variety of commercial and military products. Distortion in the size and shape of parts resulting from the heat treatment process is a pervasive manufacturing problem that causes higher finishing costs, excessive scrap and rework, long delivery times, and negative environmental impact. To date, techniques that have been developed to reduce or eliminate heat treatment distortion are largely based on experience and have been limited to trial and error. This presentation describes the philosophy and results of an ongoing collaborative project to develop a methodology and computer simulation capability to predict ferrous alloy component response (distortion, residual stress, and microstructure) to industrial heat treatment processes for automotive, truck, bearing, and aerospace applications.

The computer-aided-design and analysis of a robust casting process requires the optimization of both mold filling and solidification. A number of commercial casting codes are available for modeling the fluid flow during mold filling and the heat transfer during solidification. The next generation casting process models will build on present capabilities to allow the prediction of microporosity and other defects and microstructure. This paper will discuss the issues involved in the development of next generation casting process models and present results from a computer model for microporosity prediction that is based on first principles, and will take into account alloy composition, alloy microstructure, the initial hydrogen content of the liquid alloy, and the resistance to inter-dendritic fluid flow to feed shrinkage.

Metal Compression Forming (MCF) is a variant of the squeeze casting process, in which molten metal is allowed to solidify under pressure in order to close porosity and form a sound part. However, the MCF process applies pressure on the entire mold face, thereby directing pressure on all regions of the casting and producing a uniformly sound part. The process is capable of producing parts with properties close to those of forgings, while retaining the near net shape, complexity in geometry, and relatively low cost of the casting process. The paper describes the casting process development involved in the production of an aluminum A357 alloy motor mount bracket, including the use of a filling and solidification model to design the gating and determine process parameters. Tensile properties of the component are presented and correlated with those of forged components.