DFMA’s practical contributions to the civil vehicle armoring process: a systematic literature review 2021-36-0017

The increasing rates of violence and the lack of effective public security policies, especially in large urban areas in developing countries, have reflected directly in the automotive civil armor market, making Brazil the world leader in the segment of ballistic protection type III-A level against handguns according to the NIJ 0108.01 standard [1], followed by Mexico. Faced with this scenario, to speed up the armoring process on brand new automobiles, the armoring companies have adopted shop floor procedures to quickly assembly the ballistic protection parts, without considering automotive design engineering and manufacturing criteria of the vehicle. One of the solutions for improving the quality of this process and optimizing costs is the adoption of the DFMA® tool, Design for Manufacturing and Assembly. Since, there is no specific DFMA® literature regarding automotive armoring processes, the authors have addressed this through a systematic literature review to obtain the references of the state of the art related to DFMA® tool. Based on this context, this review intends to present the following aspects: the related techniques and their main results, challenges and opportunities, its support as a reference in the armoring service area and the advantages of keeping the warranty and original functionalities of the civil armored vehicles.