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Brazil is the largest civilian armored vehicle market in the world with more than 16,000 new protected units produced in 2018, followed by Mexico with 7,000 automobiles, according to Brazilian Army (BA) data. In this context, this paper presents an overview of Brazilian market for civilian vehicle armoring, definitions and characteristics of transparent and opaque ballistic resistance protective materials according to U. S. Department of Justice, the National Institute of Justice, NIJ Standard 0108.01. Based on this premises, the paper addresses basic technical requirements for ballistic safety in design and process to guarantee minimum quality of armoring services. The purpose of this paper is to safeguard the original features and functionality of the automotive components while simultaneously providing recommended ballistic protection of the vehicle with quality.

Fiberglass laminated parts are used in automotive industry, especially for limited quantities of parts production. They are useful on prototypes and special vehicles, among other things. If the parts are not laminated with required quality, the result can jeopardize the vehicle parts application. This paper shows a simple manner of vacuum bagging process application for fiberglass and carbon fiber parts lamination with dimensional and surface quality required. It also shows the mould fabrication process and its importance to the laminated parts quality.

Competition among car makers increases each day, as such companies look forward to launching new vehicle models which meet the different consumer niche. As a result, developing different vehicles simultaneously is a market requirement, and doing so might lead to increased production costs in case no appropriate developing and launching strategy is applied. Upon this scenario, the platform strategy has been a practice among car makers for decades and has promoted both standardization and reuse of vehicle components and systems. The most recent global architecture strategy has been used by some of the world car makers, combining communization and standardization to increased flexibility if compared to the conventional platform, which represents a higher number of derivative vehicles as well. The objective of this work is to identify the relevant variables taken into consideration when selecting an appropriate strategy for developing a new global vehicle.

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.

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.

Concurrent engineering principles have been almost universally adopted as the ideal solution to the reduction in time for products development. Even with concurrency practice, the lack of interaction among the professionals is still present in some stages of the product development process (PDP). This lack of interaction, or gap, may be observed in the three macro-phases of PDP: macro-phase of product strategy (PS); macro-phase of product and process development (PPD); macro-phase of production and continuous improvement (PCI). The present work aims to propose a methodology, denominated Technical Interface (TI), as an aid to automotive product development process (Automotive-PDP). This methodology can contribute to the engineering departments in charge of PS; PPD and PCI for the update and preservation of technical information about product; process, and production, during all the Automotive-PDP.

The existent competitiveness in the automobile industry has been taking their manufacturers to an incessant search for methods and processes that seek the production of vehicles with quality and accessible costs to their costumers. The Vehicle Development Process (VDP) became an essential element for the success of a vehicle in the market, because the companies found out that, when concentrating their efforts during the development phase, the opportunities for product improvement will be much less onerous when compared with the costs spent when the vehicle are already in production. On the other hand, those improvement opportunities are evidently more difficult of be pointed during VDP than when the vehicle is already in production. This article aims to evaluate how the Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) methodology can be applied to the vehicle development process in order to provide significant results in terms of quality improvement, cost optimization and reduction of development timing.

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 competition among automotive industries increases each year worldwide. Traditional industries as well as traditional markets end up becoming the target for expansion of new global industries. It can be stated that automotive industries dedicate special attention to lean thinking and Toyota Production System (TPS). This attention is not by chance as, in doing so, these companies obtain competitive advantages over their competitors, such as: improved profitability, higher negotiation margin, the possibility of applying lower selling prices of their products, among others. This study aims to present several waste examples, as well as many activities that regularly occur within the production process of automotive industries (some both in product and process design). These activities form part of the final cost of the vehicle although without adding value to the final product for the customer.

The Digital Factory (DF) can be defined as a set of computational software applied in the manufacturing design, development, implementation and operation. The goal of this work is to investigate DF's available resources in the analysis of workforce and machinery required for changes in the production scenarios in a determined automobile model. Therefore, a theoretical framework is developed. Afterwards, there is an investigation of the resources available for this application, actually commercialized by the three main software supply companies for DF. The results of the research are presented and discussed. Suggestions for future developments are identified, and the work is finished with the pertinent considerations.