A Review Of Data-Based Methods For The Development Of An Adaptive Engineering Change System For Automotive Body Shop

Abstract

The automotive body shop with its high investment costs and resource intensive high automation level is not sufficiently responsive to the demands of agility and adaptivity. The coexistence of combustion engine and e-mobility platforms, but also design modifications on products during production phase, require constant and agile product adaptation in automotive structural components. These changes to the structural car body design have different effects on production planning. However, in some cases they have a considerable influence on the equipment design, e.g., the choice of jig, fixture, and joining technology and the number of robots used. This means that investment decisions for the procurement of new equipment or even entire production systems are also determined. In particular, late introduced new requirements or engineering changes in the product development process (PDP) have a massive impact on the quality of planning and compliance with established premises at the beginning of the PDP. Measures for the holistic consideration of engineering changes and their influences require both a product-side and a production-side review of influences. In this review paper, existing approaches for the product and production-side handling of requirements and engineering changes are analyzed by a systematic literature review. Existing data-based methods are analyzed with regard to their applicability on engineering change management (ECM) in body shop. Based on this, enabling methods are assessed concerning their suitability for the transfer to a holistic, adaptive, and data-based ECM system for the PDP of automotive car bodies.