Flexibility provides a way to address technological progress and changing user needs in a vehicle’s architecture. Yet, this has serious implications on the development and manufacturing process. It necessitates additional investments in long-lasting interfaces and changeable production design. Within this paper, we address the research question “which components of a vehicle should be designed flexible and which parts can remain static to streamline investments in flexibility?”. We develop a methodology to support this decision by combining technology intelligence methods with comprehensive user acceptance research. Our approach builds upon a certain notion of function, which connects technological progress with customer utility. To this end, we analyze patents to evaluate technology dynamics and a user survey to detect functional needs. The research project FlexCAR designs a flexible vehicle architecture and was used for evaluation. Thereby, the methodology showed significant and sound results in its application and revealed flexible components with little effort. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first methodology of its kind.
Developing Technology Strategies for Flexible Automotive Products and Processes
ARENA2036
Advances in Automotive Production Technology – Theory and Application ; Chapter : 12 ; 97-107
2021-06-02
11 pages
Article/Chapter (Book)
Electronic Resource
English
DEPARTMENTS - Special Coverage Products: Automotive Technology
Online Contents | 1999
MODERN RELATIONSCHIPS BETWEEN SUPPLIERS AND THE AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY FOR DEVELOPING NEW PRODUCTS
British Library Conference Proceedings | 2004
|Automotive Powerplant Isolation Strategies
SAE Technical Papers | 1997
|Automotive Powerplant Isolation Strategies
British Library Conference Proceedings | 1997
|