CVC project groups – as at February 2009

The participation in project groups with the topics materials, manufacturing process, supply chain management and reliability/ robustness is offered in context with the partner contract. The present focus in the field of technology is on “Emission Control Systems“ , a working group is currently being established. The project groups are composed of OEMs, suppliers and scientists. Aim of the working groups is to contribute significantly to boosting the competitiveness of CVC partners, to increase the reliability of commercial vehicles and to prepare larger eligible projects within a consortium consisting of partner companies and scientists or eligible network projects between companies (KMU’s).
Only partners of the Commercial Vehicle Clusters can participate.
The project groups have compiled the following projects:

Materials

This project group is currently being established.

Due to the CVC partner structure, the focus will be on functionality and producibility. Manufacturing and processing costs as well as the contribution to weight reduction is the focal point in evaluating the use of alternative materials (steel, aluminium, plastic).

Manufacturing Process

The project group currently conducts a survey on the topic of thread locking. Other topics: traceability within the manufacturing process chains taking into consideration especially the soft skills of staff, value-stream design, the structure of the manufacturing process, Manufacturing Execution System, mass production versus piece production, optimisation of production planning and execution, optimisation of production processes, production consistency within a multiplicity of locations.

Supply Chain Management

The Supply Chain Management topic deals with the co-operation in proceedings. The Reliability/Robustness project group has been assigned to the topic of Supply Chain Management since the optimisation of requirement/functional specifications and quality assurance are essentially discussed within that group. CVC partner companies have compiled standards for supplier self-assessment and audits and they are available in the partner section on our website.

The project group will deal with the topic delivery quality and relevant tools next.

Reliability/Robustness

A survey about the interface customer/supplier in securing reliable products was conducted as a project. The establishment of a “vertical communication‘‘ to integrate different expertise of OEM and tier 1, 2 etc. at an early stage of the product development phase has been discussed in particular. A guideline of the “vertical communication” meeting and a short checklist of generic relevant requirement/functional specification elements will be available on our website shortly. The project group will focus next on methods of reliability planning and verification throughout the tiers.