Loss Minimisation and Cost-Effective Commonality of Parts

Excerpt

In order to minimise the development and production costs in the automotive industry, despite steadily increasing variety of models and applications offered by the OEMs, the pressure on standardisation of components and production processes is increasing continuously. At the same time, the world adopted and announced massive legal demands concerning the reduction of CO₂ emissions for the entire vehicle fleet. The use of improved and more resilient materials for higher reduction of mechanical friction leads to a significant amount of the realised lowering in fuel consumption. Significant future potential for friction reduction and loss minimisation is expected to result from, for example, one for the particular application optimised, on-demand component dimensioning and tailored calibrations. This dedicated fine-tuning approach is contrary to the widely spread application of a clear common part strategy. In the course of this paper FEV discusses the question whether the additional cost of a component diversification can be justified within an engine family in contradiction to a best cost approach by using the scaling effects of parts communisation. …