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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.

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.

The Rybnik Eng Center was reactivated at the beginning of 2008. One of the objectives of this new center is to develop the lean spirit and to directly apply it to the new center. Two years have now passed and these 2 papers give the opportunity to review the current status and to reflect on the lessons learned so far on our lean journey. The 2 papers are structured around people, processes and tools. The first paper focuses on the people, the second one on the processes and the tools. Some great progress has been made in the different areas of application including: - Processes: Some key engineering processes in Testing, CAD, CAE and prototype shop were thoroughly investigated and improved. Especially the quality of the outputs and significant reductions in lead times have been achieved. - Tools and Technologies: Tenneco worked on both aspects, the soft and hard tools. Soft tools are covering visual management which allows a better alignment.

The Rybnik Engineering Center was reinforced at the beginning of 2008. One aim of this new center has been to develop the lean spirit and to directly apply it to the new center. Two years have now passed and these 2 papers give the opportunity to review the current status and to reflect on the lessons learned so far on our lean journey. The 2 papers are structured around people, processes and tools. The first paper focuses on people which arguably represents the most challenging aspect of the development of an R& D center abroad. One the key objectives of 2008-09 was to develop the engineering skills required to take over full customer projects. This target was especially challenging given the operating conditions, operation and capital expedites have been drastically reduced to the very severe downturn of the automotive industry in 2008. The first paper concentrates on the processes how to identify, hire, train and retain people.

The emitted noise of an exhaust system is divided into three different kinds of noise: Tailpipe noise, noise transmitted through the hanger into the cabin and surface radiated noise. This paper deals with the surface radiated noise which becomes more and more unmasked as the radiated sound power of other sources, e.g. of the tailpipe, decreases. Noise sources, the transfer path and the radiation of a structure are presented. A method for calculating and optimizing a structure with FEA (finite element analysis) is also part of this paper. An exhaust system is a complex dynamical system. Global eigenfrequencies of a whole exhaust system are below 200 Hz. A muffler moves then in rigid body motion and the radiated sound power is subjective not relevant. The main sound power is transferred through the hanger to the underbody. At higher frequencies the acoustical effects appear more local and are more effective in noise radiation.

Being a tier-one supplier to the automotive industry, TA has developed a methodology and tools since the beginning of the 90's to address its Advanced Engineering activities. These tools consist of tracking the technical needs of the carmakers and then setting up expertise to meet the future demands in terms of new products, engineering tools and systems. The developed tools are unique.

Steel prices soared in the past years due to the increased demand on the Asian market. Due to difficult economic conditions of the automotive industry it is not possible to transfer expenses to the final customer. Reduction of steel is therefore required to compensate for higher steel prices. Whereas the underbody design space decreases in European vehicles, requirements are getting higher in terms of tailpipe noise and backpressure reduction. This leads to flat structures for mufflers which are integrated into the underbody to achieve as much inner volume for tailpipe noise damping as possible. That requires larger surfaces and results in a rise in costs, weight and radiated noise over surfaces. Additionally, original equipment manufacturers (OEM) require lightweight designs to meet carbon dioxide and consumption targets. Especially for Diesel applications the weight of exhaust systems is penalized by heavy Diesel particle filters.

A experimental method has been developed to assess the flow noise in tailpipe noise through measurements on an acoustic flow bench with cold air. To set up this procedure, measurements were made on flow bench, engine dynamometer and chassis dynamometer. The Mach number seems to be the appropriate parameter to correlate the overall level of the radiated flow noise. If mass flow and temperature under running conditions are known, the noise level can be extrapolated for real conditions. The Strouhal or Helmholtz numbers are appropriate parameters for getting details of spectra contents.

After having successfully implemented Lean in Tenneco's Clean Air division, Tenneco Europe decided to expand Lean to its other divisions - Ride Performance including Aftermarket in 2011. These divisions were able to fully benefit from the best practices developed over the last 10 years. The implementation was articulated around two major axes: the execution of complex projects related to processes including several functions and sites. This approach allowed us to reach a critical mass in a reasonable time within the different functions and sites; the execution of smaller projects focused on one specific function,e.g.: Engineering or Sales. This approach is complementary to the first one since it enhances the spread of the lean spirit within the organization. This paper focuses on Tenneco's Ride Performance division and is split into two parts.

During the 4 last years, Lean has been successfully implemented in one of the Tenneco’s Business Units: Ride Performance. This paper reflects on the results and more specifically on the third principle of Lean [1] “How to make flow” and on the fifth principle “To strive for perfection” obtained in the fields of “Product Development” related to Processes, Tools and People. Processes and Hard Tools. How to improve the flow in the engineering processes? It will be shown that In general standardized processes supported by some integrated tools and, more specifically Some workload leveling in testing, CAD Departments, Standardization in design processes, testing procedures and prototypes development processes and Standardization and availability of components and parts for prototype building are key enablers to enhance flow in the Product Development.