Carmakers need to design right first time to continue driving automotive boom, says Romax

Britain’s booming automotive industry continues to grow as industry players compete to gain market share. Dr Jamie Pears, Product Manager from Romax says that the fallout from this will continue to intensify the production process, resulting in emphasis placed on shorter development times. In light of this, companies that adopt a “right first time,” approach within the early design and analysis phases will be able to save time on errors without compromising on quality while still maintaining competitive advantage.

Recent research from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), the car industry body, has announced that demand for new vehicles has continued to grow for consecutive months.

Dr Pears states that the demand for new cars has injected new vigour into the industry with the automotive industry demand intensifying the production process. Carmakers are under pressure to gain market share by bringing models to market quicker, however these pressures increase the risk of errors during production and in order to overcome this, a ‘right first time’ mantra must be adopted to streamline production while balancing the investment into innovation and R&D:

“Understandably, this is not an easy process and therefore it’s fair to say errors can occur during various stages of the design and production process.”

Dr Pears suggests it is in the design and analysis phase in which the biggest improvements can be made.

“To really make an impact on development cycle time, design problems need to be identified within the design phase rather than the prototyping phase to minimise prototype cycles. By having the right computer aided engineering (CAE) tools and development processes in place, design problems can be identified and solved quickly and efficiently with minimal impact on other areas of manufacturing and production.

“The emphasis must be on a “right first time” approach – this is critical to the management of innovation risk, all while achieving the necessary balance to continue driving the industry.”