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The implementation and development efforts of lean NOx trap catalysts for heavy-duty applications decreased a number of years ago. Most heavy-duty engine manufacturers realized that the system complexity as well as the durability of such a system does not allow large volume production without significant risk. The current consensus of the heavy-duty community is that for 2010 the SCR system will be the prime path to meet the 0.2 g/bHPhr NOx emission standard, although this is subject to adequate infrastructure investment and progress. As a low volume manufacturer, in order to comply with the 2007 heavy-duty phase-in emission standards, General Engine Products (a subsidiary of AM General LLC) integrated a NOx adsorber system on the Optimizer 6500 engine. This engine features split combustion chamber design, rotary fuel injection pump and operates with EGR.

Gasoline detergency is related to deposits at various parts of the engine and therefore has impact on vehicle driveability and emission properties. The widely used engine tests such as CEC F-20 M111 and ASTM D6201 Ford 2.3L tests take tens of hours and thus are very expensive and time consuming to carry out. A new simulation test for gasoline detergency on intake valve cleanliness using lean-oxygen gum method was developed and the correlation of test results with M111 engine test was studied. Gasoline samples with different detergency levels were tested with both the lean-oxygen gum method and the M111 engine test. Test results of 24 gasoline samples show satisfactory correlation between the lean-oxygen gum method and the M111 engine test (R₂=0.7258).

A new Electronic Gantry Applied Drilling System has been developed and demonstrated which provides a CNC controlled, multi-axis drilling system to replace hand drilling and countersinking operations at Assembly Jig Stations. Therefore improving hole quality while reducing touch labor and tooling costs. The system has statistical process control capabilities which confirm position accuracy for tooling details, parts holes.

The automotive aftermarket represents a challenge for supply chain management when compared to traditional practices in the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) supply chain. This paper presents a case study for a Tier One automotive supplier’s challenges with inventory carrying costs, backorder risk, and supplier relationships for a rear seat entertainment system in the automotive aftermarket. It will also address the lean principles used to improve the business and increase material planning analyst productivity. A call for OEMs to examine their business practices is also included.

“Building quality into processes” - Eiji Toyoda, Toyota Motor Corporation The Indian automotive industry has grown at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 14 per cent per annum over the last five years. According to the UNIDO International Yearbook of Industrial Statistics 2008, India features among the top 15 auto-makers. Currently, it ranks 11th in the world in terms of car production and 13th in terms of commercial vehicle production. As India is becoming a hub for global car makers, companies are looking to enhance their component engineering, product design and development capabilities in India to increase their share in the automotive knowledge-based business. So there is an urgent need to infuse new process improvement techniques to the product development cycle, to stay ahead of the global competition.

Steadily increasing challenges to achieve a competitive position in the automotive supplier industry emphasize the importance of being successful in product development (PD). Much effort has been made to develop effective processes within the manufacturing environment, but PD may be the next focus area to increase the competitiveness in the future. The aim of this study is to discuss Norwegian automotive suppliers in term of lean PD, using the four cornerstones in the conceptual model by M. Kennedy described in the book “Product Development for the Lean Enterprise”. These are: entrepreneurial leadership, responsibility based planning & control, expert engineering workforce and set-based concurrent engineering [1]. The study is performed by combining a questionnaire and interviews with 19 automotive suppliers in Norway. In summary the Norwegian automotive supplier industry is not lean in the sense of all the principles behind the conceptual model.

During the 4 last years, Lean has been successfully implemented in one of the Tenneco’s Business Units: Ride Performance. This paper reflects on the results and more specifically on the third principle of Lean [1] “How to make flow” and on the fifth principle “To strive for perfection” obtained in the fields of “Product Development” related to Processes, Tools and People. Processes and Hard Tools. How to improve the flow in the engineering processes? It will be shown that In general standardized processes supported by some integrated tools and, more specifically Some workload leveling in testing, CAD Departments, Standardization in design processes, testing procedures and prototypes development processes and Standardization and availability of components and parts for prototype building are key enablers to enhance flow in the Product Development.

Several factors influence a company working culture including its industry, its geographical region, as well as the cultural and the educational background of its employees. Despite these, Japanese companies have successfully transferred a company’s working culture from Japan to other countries [2], so that only minor regional differences in productivity remain. Such transfer is possible with a strong process oriented mind set and working style. This paper examines the change in a working culture associated with the prototyping of exhaust systems in India. That change required a shift from a reactive “firefighting” mode of working to a structured, projectable and reliable working environment. The goal was to achieve increased in-time delivery, higher quality, greater flexibility, more innovation and reduced cost. The same process approach may be transferred from India to other parts of the world, while allowing for country-specific influences on a company’s working culture.

Previous research has shown the potential benefits of running an engine with excess air. The challenges of running lean have also been identified, but not all of them have been fundamentally explained. Under high dilution levels, a lean limit is reached where combustion becomes unstable, significantly deteriorating drivability and engine efficiency, thus limiting the full potential of lean combustion. This paper expands the understanding of lean combustion by explaining the fundamentals behind this rapid rise in combustion variability and how this instability can be reduced. A flame entrainment combustion model was used to explain the fundamentals behind the observed combustion behavior in a comprehensive set of lean gasoline and hydrogen-enhanced cylinder pressure data in an SI engine. The data covered a wide range of operating conditions including different compression ratios, loads, types of dilution, fuels including levels of hydrogen enhancement, and levels of turbulence.

Nowadays, auto-parts companies spend a lot of efforts in trying to improve their manufacturing performance, which can be easily explained by the influence of many competitors, and also due to strong pressure besides their costumers to reduce prices of their products. Normally, the investments to buy new machines and contract new labors to respond customer demands gets lower as day goes by, due to this, the manufacturing team must use the best techniques available to get the maximum of their manufacturing system in an effort to meet flexibility, by the way, there is a constant effort to eliminate waste and variation in manufacturing system, for such work, many companies have adopted lean manufacturing principles in order to eliminate waste as a good response to produce more with less, and aligned with this thinking, Six Sigma methodology comes to add to lean manufacturing a robust way to eliminate variation on manufacturing process.

Lean Manufacturing and Six Sigma are very common and used techniques in the market, but the key point that we are facing nowadays is how to use them together. The objective of this paper is to show a proposal that uses Modeling and Simulation to join these two methodologies and represents an improvement of the Lean Six Sigma System (LSS) in a automotive company.

The automotive thermal reactor may be suitable for controlling the hydrocarbon (HC) and carbon monoxide (CO) emissions from lean-mixture engines. Little is known about the performance characteristics of “lean” reactors, however, since much of the previous research on reactors considered only rich-engine operation. This study screened the effects of six operating variables on lean-reactor performance by means of a fractional factorial experiment. Also, spatial temperature and species concentration distributions within the experimental two-pass reactor were obtained at several operating conditions. Of the variables screened, reactor insulation had the largest effect on emissions performance. Higher engine speed, retarded spark timing, and a less lean air-fuel ratio were also shown to improve reactor performance significantly. Within the range of this study, exhaust flow rate and engine exhaust-port liners did not significantly affect reactor performance.

Using an example vehicle, the General Motors Lean Machine, the question explored is How might present vehicle fleets transition to lean vehicles? When compared to present vehicles, lean vehicles are, say, a factor of two less expensive to own and operate, less pollution and congestion generating, and less energy consuming. There is the problem, however, that such vehicles are incompatible with the present system technologies. The investigation concentrates on the evolution of a pathway facilitating testing of the Lean Machine in markets. Results are presented from analyses of ways parking and road facilities might be adjusted to accommodate the vehicle; roles for IVHS technologies are noted. The conclusions from facility investigations are set within the context of strategies for achieving change. A key question is whether early users of lean vehicles would have to bear a disproportionate share of transition incompatibility costs, but that seems not to be the case.

These are challenging times, not only for the manufacturing industry but for our planet and its inhabitants. The markets are changing rapidly, and there is fierce competition everywhere in the automotive business and in the manufacturing world. We face global sustainability challenges, including climate change, depletion of natural resources, poverty, population growth, urbanization and congestion. Consumers are increasingly concerned about rising fuel prices, energy security (see Figure 1: “Increased demand for energy”) and climate change. With these great challenges comes great opportunity. As the pace of change accelerates, innovation is more important than ever [2]. The reduction of CO2 emissions, initiatives for vehicle weight reduction, fuel economy improvements, hybrid vehicle technologies, hydrogen fuel cell powertrains or bio-fueled automobiles only represent some of the latest product related innovations, benefiting the environment and the customer.

Lean Premixed Compression Ignition (PCI) low-temperature combustion promises to simultaneously reduce NOx and PM emissions, while suffering a moderate penalty in fuel consumption. Similarly, opportunities exist to develop rich PCI combustion strategies which can provide the necessary exhaust constituents for aggressive regeneration of a Lean NOx Trap (LNT). The current work highlights the development of lean and rich PCI combustion strategies. It is shown that the lean PCI combustion strategy successfully operates with low NOx and PM, at the expense of a 5% increase in fuel consumption over conventional diesel operation. The rich PCI combustion strategy similarly operates with low NOx and PM, and produces enough CO (up to 5% by volume in exhaust) for aggressive regeneration of an LNT.

Sustainability, Global Reporting Initiative, Corporate Social Responsibility, Lean, Continuous Improvement, Kaizen and “Green” are terms and initiatives that relate to each other as well as safety and environment, but often cause confusion. This paper first puts the various strategic issues into context to help participants better understand the “big picture” of strategic issues. The triple bottom line of sustainability (People, Planet and Profit or 3Ps) is a major issue for any organization. Attainment of sustainable growth demands continuous improvement in both manufacturing and design. The paper addresses how continuous improvement based on Dr. Deming's principles should be the benchmark for leading culture change. Included in this organizational culture change is occupational safety woven into the company's DNA. A relatively new concept, the marriage of lean and safety becomes the enabler for continuous improvement and long-term sustainable growth.

A summary of theoretical considerations that motivate the development of lean burn systems is presented along with a review of the most common approaches used to implement this technique. An analysis of experimental data from several sources is then introduced in order to substantiate the advantages and indicate drawbacks encountered when implementing lean burn vehicles. It is concluded that at the present state of development, U.S. emission standards present a considerable challenge to the realization of the fuel economy advantages theoretically inherent to lean burn engines.

The characteristic of an aftermarket assembly line is the low volume and high quantity of product to be assembled in the same assembly line. The objective of this article is to show how a Lean Manufacturing tool can improve the capacity and results in the assembly line. Even in a cell already “mature” we can put in practice the principles of continuous improvement. The tool has been used here was SMED, TPM, 5S. This principles applied in the aftermarket create an improvement. In this way we can decide to put another part numbers in the same cell as much as the volumes of the old ones decrease. The major result was the gain in setup time, and does same parts in smaller area.

Nature has been designing self-propelled vehicles (animals and plants) for the last 600 million years and has arrived at a variety of designs that are highly energy efficient, elegant in construction and quiet in operation. Biomimicry is the process of utilizing designs and processes found in nature to inspire advances in man-made systems. New technologies have emerged that enable a biomimetic approach to the design not only of automobile bodies but also automotive sub-systems and components. This paper highlights several examples of biomimetic design that could improve the performance of today's automobiles.

When hydrogen is added to a gasoline fueled spark ignition engine the lean limit of the engine can be extended. Lean running engines are inherently more efficient and have the potential for significantly lower NOx emissions. In the engine concept examined here, supplemental hydrogen is generated on-board the vehicle by diverting a fraction of the gasoline to a plasmatron where a partial oxidation reaction is initiated with an electrical discharge, producing a plasmatron gas containing primarily hydrogen, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen. Two different gas mixtures were used to simulate the plasmatron output. An ideal plasmatron gas (H2, CO, and N2) was used to represent the output of the theoretically best plasmatron. A typical plasmatron gas (H2, CO, N2, and CO2) was used to represent the current output of the plasmatron. A series of hydrogen addition experiments were also performed to quantify the impact of the non-hydrogen components in the plasmatron gas.