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The competition among automotive industries increases each year worldwide. Among their diverse needs, what can be highlighted are: market expansion, model diversification, competitive prices, customer-recognized quality, new products release in shorter time periods, among others. The occurrence of flaws that might compromise the health or safety of the product’s user is admittedly one of the largest issues for any manufacturer, especially if these flaws are identified after its commercialization (recall). In this work, a study on recall in the automotive industry in the Brazilian market will be presented, comprising the years of 2013 and 2014. Reasons and causes of recall are addressed, based on the sample of the aforementioned research, with special emphasis on flaws derived from the production process. The conclusion at the end of the work is that the final assembly in the automotive manufacturing process is what requires more attention from engineering area.

This work was motivated by the specific needs of a materials flow and packing planning sector (PFME), within a manufacturing engineering department of a vehicle assembly company in Brazil. In this sector, there is a growing need to obtain prototype parts in the shortest time and at the lowest cost possible in order to carry out static prototype tests of the special packing and transportation racks used in this company, since these racks need to be ready to assist the preparation phase of the series production of the vehicle. The objective of this work is to survey the academic theory and the existing literature in order to find an application proposal of rapid prototyping (RP) techniques to make the parts used in the rack tests, thus reducing time and acquisition costs.

The fulfillment of the strict market requirements for customers in the “off-road” vehicles segment is crucial to increase the value and reliability of the products and services available by a manufacturer of heavy-duty vehicles. The need for a product that meets these demands becomes an outstanding factor of a manufacturer, since it provides active customer care services, aiming at the preventive and/or corrective “in loco” maintenance for its vehicles and equipment. This work proposal encompasses the development, manufacturing and management, by its dealers, of a remote maintenance unit (RMU), customized and configured with all the equipment required to support active maintenance services, both preventive and corrective, in the operation/work region of the customer. Thus, the target is the minimization of the running time of its vehicles and/or equipment to the nearest service station, or even of the wait time for concluding a service.

In the automotive industries, time and parts production costs are fundamental, mainly in prototyping production. The RTV (Room Temperature Vulcanized) process is an important alternative production to flexible silicone molds when you need to inject polyurethane parts. The objective is time reduction in tooling production and parts. RTV requires notable initial investments in equipments. Many times, this cost does not fit in the automotive third part company's budget. This work shows how is possible to obtain parts by RTV process with excellent quality, without high investments in equipments and without quality loss in produced parts. Lead times and tooling and parts costs are analyzed. Due to equipments low costs, this alternative is accessible not only to automotive industries but also to small and medium suppliers.