Ebook: Automotive Development Processes: Processes for Successful Customer Oriented Vehicle Development

For any product development process, the key question is which factors guarantee the product’s success in the market. The book discusses the critical factors for success in automotive development, from product strategy through all phases of development to series production, and characterizes the roles and activities of all partners involved. It is a comprehensive, practically oriented compilation of motor vehicle development, focusing on the complete vehicle integration processes as the orchestration of all activities required to strategically plan and implement the customer relevant characteristics of the complete product.

The book covers central subjects such as building and testing of virtual cars, systems integration, project management or supplier integration; and offers a variety of examples and pictures from real-life vehicle development and gives the reader a very realistic insight into the complex world of vehicle development projects.

The book – based on the corresponding graduate course the author held at Clemson University, South Carolina – is a comprehensive, practically oriented presentation of the vehicle development processes. Based on the key question of the product strategy ("Which factors guarantee the product development’s success?") it characterizes the contents of the different stages, roles and activities during the product development process, the application of project management methods and the networking with suppliers – enriched with the author’s professional expertise. In contrast to the already available textbooks on vehicle development this publication is focused on the integration processes of the overall vehicle development, which means the "orchestration" of the single components for the strategic implementation of customer relevant characteristics of the completed product and to a lesser extent on the optimization of the vehicle components. Furthermore the construction and testing of virtual vehicles concentrating on the geometry-, function- and product-production-integration is broadly discussed.