Today car manufacturers must decrease the time between the introduction of new products, due mainly to parameters such as customer needs and the increased competition in the global automotive market. For this reason it is of the utmost importance to reduce the lead time to develop new products and processes, including the running of production and at the same time to maintain and increase the quality of the product. A tool to accomplish leadtime reduction is to use a technology called Free Form Fabrication (FFF), also known as rapid prototyping. For this reason Volvo Cars finds that FFF is an outstanding tool for designers, with first of all an opportunity to visualize parts, for packaging, to apply function tests and to use as a model for casting, etc. Up to 70 % shorter leadtime and a cost reduction of 50 % can be achieved compared to traditional prototyping. To achieve a product and process development philosophy concerning Free Form Fabrication it is important to improve the quality on the manufactured prototypes and their processes. This is necessary to achieve the performance required for a competitive automotive market. If you look at the FFF-market and the FFF-appliers today, both internally and externally, every one is waiting for the next step to happen within the FFF community. New innovations concerning, the FFF-technology, and the criteria mentioned in this paper, must be fulfilled. Therefore it is necessary for us, the FFF-appliers, to clarify what we need and what we want of the FFF-suppliers. When the suppliers have shared and comprehended these facts, we can then make progress concerning further investments and applications of Free Form Fabrication. If this would be fulfilled, the outcome in the product and process development would be a more intense and efficient application of FFF, which would result in major leadtime reductions, more cost efficient prototypes, reduced manufacturing costs for complete vehicles and the more frequent introduction of new products.
Rapid prototyping within Volvo cars
Rapid-Prototyping in Volvo-Automobilen
1999
6 Seiten, 9 Bilder, 1 Tabelle
Aufsatz (Konferenz)
Englisch
Rapid Prototyping within Volvo Cars
British Library Conference Proceedings | 1999
|Springer Verlag | 2012
|British Library Conference Proceedings | 2000
|Kraftfahrwesen | 2003
|Kraftfahrwesen | 2005
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