Sharing the wealth

A versatile vehicle architecture can deliver multiple variants from a single platform, reducing development costs and time-to-market.

Over the past few years, automobile manufacturers in the U.S. have been focusing on developing processes and tools to enable production of a range of vehicles that are distinctive to the customer but share core technology underneath. The intense competition in the marketplace has driven companies to compete in new market segments, and the challenge is to keep volumes high enough to pay for the capital investment required to constantly deliver new and exciting products.

Flexible manufacturing processes contribute significantly to this objective, and product development now routinely addresses multiple variants at the concept design stage. In January this year, Ford launched its new global product development system to reduce product-creation cost and better tailor products to meet customer expectations.