Large scale production of mixed material products

Description of the project

This project is part of the Vinnova-funded Strategic Innovation Program "Production2030". The aim of this project is study the impact on the production system when products start being produced, fully or partly, of mixed material parts. Parts of mixed materials are generally more expensive than traditional steel parts. To justify the expensive parts, the products must be designed in a new way. This is a known fact and it is studied in other projects. However little is researched on the production system aspects of this change of materials. A company could choose to buy the new parts from suppliers or produce them in house.

To outsource is an option but in the long run it may cause a radical change to the company. A car manufacturer that used to produce most steel parts in house and then spot weld them together could end up as an assembly company with little or none own production. Another alternative is to rearrange today´s factory into a new factory where the same portion of the product is produced in house. Within this project the changes to the production system in the different situations are to be studied. The studies and evaluations are mainly to be performed in the virtual factory available at XPRES at KTH. In this virtual environment several alternatives may be compared to each other.

The industrial cases that are planned to be studied represent different situations regarding how large portion of the parts that are replaced by mixed materials. It is therefore possible to compare how the impact on the productions system varies in the cases. These comparisons are planned to be used to help companies with decision support when planning a change of materials. To help companies outside the actual project group is however something that is made possible in the future as a result from this project.