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HyTRAN - Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies for Road Transport, a project under the auspices of the European Commission's Sixth Framework Program for Sustainable Development, should advance the fuel cell technology towards commercially viable solutions by developing components and systems and to integrate the subsystems into innovative, fully integrated and compact Fuel Cell Systems. The project is divided into two technical platforms: 80 kW Direct Hydrogen PEM Fuel Cell system for propulsion of passenger cars 5 kW Diesel Reformate PEM Fuel Cell Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) for truck on-board power supply TENNECO is playing a central role in this project. One of TENNECO's key tasks is the full system integration of the Fuel Cell APU. In a first step the system was integrated virtually with help of CATIA V5. In a second step, TENNECO is building the prototype, based on the results gained from the virtual integration work.

New ideas and innovations are the key to ongoing future success for companies. Many idea generating tools exist in the marketplace. It is of paramount importance to integrate and monitor innovation within a lean company process. Ideas without execution are merely dreams with low likelihood that they will come to fruition. We have identified two main strategies can be highlighted to generate innovations. One strategy is to “think out of the box” and find new markets without having an actual product (development to occur after the market is identified). This is more of a process. The second - more product oriented - is a antilogy strategy which is very complex and breaks the product down to the real physics to define contradictions and resolve them. Here you start with product development and then try to find a market. In both cases there are many new ideas generated in brainstorming sessions.

Six Sigma was developed by Motorola in the 1980s as an enhancement of their Total Quality Management (TQM) approach focusing on quality improvement. Companies such as General Electric (GE) developed the concept even further and extended the application of Six Sigma tools to their entire business, including the development of new products, with a focus on both financial gain and customer satisfaction. Six Sigma, however, also offers a rigorous, data-driven procedure for process and product improvement and for the development of new products and processes using proven methods and tools taken from the Quality Management and Quality Engineering toolbox. Integration into the existing engineering culture and the application of these tools and concepts to a typical application at a leading global exhaust system supplier are outlined in this paper. The procedure which is used for measuring the surface radiated noise is analyzed in detail by the principles of Six Sigma.

Up to now Six Sigma has mainly been used for manufacturing. A Six Sigma approach was introduced in 2004 at Tenneco for transactional business This paper illustrates 2 examples where Six Sigma was successfully applied to improve the service quality. One first case is the improvement of a measurement system analysis [1]. In the exhaust system domain the acoustic performance of an exhaust system must meet the requirements in terms of drive-by noise of a vehicle and in terms of subjective sound. Therefore it is vital to measure the so-called “tailpipe noise” of an exhaust system with precision and reliability. Otherwise some iterations take place to confirm the data, or - more critical - an exhaust system design can be rejected when in reality it is just meeting the target curves and inversely, this could be accepted when the targets are not met.

Lean Engineering began at Tenneco in 2004 [1], [2]. A current status of lean engineering is shown. This paper focuses on 2 major principles of Lean Product Development: Establish customer defined value to separate value add from waste Front load the product development process to explore alternatives thoroughly.

To improve the effectiveness within a development, it is essential to eliminate waste. Several tools focus on this goal: Lean Engineering, Lean Manufacturing, Design For Six Sigma (DFSS) and the Best Methods approach. However, none of these tools are focused on the sharing of knowledge. Modification on a development or production process influences all stages of a project. By a coupling of all processes, all influence factors are covered leading to the strategy of a Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). All data which belong to development, logistics and sales are saved and administrated in a global information center. The existence of such a center and the evolution of design tools give us the opportunity of sharing process knowledge between all participants of a project. This data sharing process allows us to manage and optimize processes using objective criteria in order to find the best solution. In a dynamic world changes occur at all levels of a product development cycle.

Rybnik Engineering Center (REC) is the new R&D center developed by Tenneco in Poland. One of the key ideas behind the REC is to develop it based on the lean engineering principles. In a first step a white paper was established and agreed upon with senior management. This white paper consisted of: a vision a set of objectives derived from this vision and a road map to reach this vision The creation of REC has been articulated around 3 major themes: 1. PERSONNEL - It is about how to identify and hire people that will fit into our lean culture. A further challenge is to then train and mentor the people. A similar model known as the inverse-T at Toyota was implemented. Lastly, a network of partners has been established and integrated in the Tenneco development processes. 2. PROCESSES - Both engineering and cross functional processes have been systematically reviewed or new ones developed.