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Vehicle development view from the trenches: a look at the tricks and tools automakers use to squeeze time and cost out of new-product development. (Process).

Article Excerpt
'Vehicle Development' means different things to different people, even among auto engineers. To some, it's the way-up-front process: defining a vehicle's role and requirements, benchmarking its intended competition, choosing its content and componentry. To others, it's vehicle-level refinement from earliest test "mule" through prototype to production-ready pilot.

Realistically, as program timing has compressed with intense competition in recent years, it seems to have evolved into a hybrid of both -- "from napkin to showroom," as one engineer succinctly put it -- and the lines between once clearly defined steps have blurred.

As applied to vehicles, Webster's most appropriate definition of "development" is "a gradual growth or advancement through progressive changes." In today's go-fast auto engineering environment, the mission is to maximize "advancement" while minimizing "changes." And there is no time for "gradual."

Every motor vehicle is an integrated set of subsystems -- body, chassis, powertrain, structure, electrical, HVAC -- each made up of many individual components. Design, development and validation (verification, through testing, that requirements have been met) happens at each of three levels: component, subsystem and vehicle.

Traditionally, the process has been mostly sequential: Vehicle requirements defined subsystem requirements, which defined component requirements. Components designed, developed and validated to meet those requirements were combined into subsystems, which in turn were developed and validated before coming together as a vehicle. The final step, full-vehicle development, ensured that all subsystems were happily married and interfaced and functioned as a team to meet the vehicle requirements and ultimately delight the customer.

Today, the luxury of sequential development is no longer an option; it simply takes too long and costs too much. Tier 1 suppliers (subsystem sources) are being brought into vehicle teams very early, and development, including vehicle-level work, is being pushed further and further upstream through computer simulation and in laboratory environments. Only where important and absolutely necessary are portions still done on roads and tracks.

Looking primarily at dynamic vehicle development -- mostly chassis dynamics (ride, handling, steering, braking) and NVH (noise, vibration and harshness) -- which still must be accomplished by trained and skilled experts in running vehicles - we talked to engineers from GM, Ford, Daimler Chrysler and Nissan to learn how each company approaches the process, what has changed...