| Abstract |
The production of special vehicles or products in volumes lower than 2.000 units per year presents specific industrial and economical problems to achieve efficiency, reliability and profitability while remaining environmentally friendly. The current trend is an increase of these specific needs which are becoming increasingly unsatisfied mainly due to too high production costs. The special vehicle sector, in which are roughly involved 2.500 SMEs in Europe for a business volume of 4.000 M€, must address escalating customer expectations, fluctuating demand, complex supply chain processes, and have now reached a critical point in their development where they need new solutions in order to stay competitive. The present State-of-the-art is a practically 100% craft or hand-made production. We aim to modify the sector from a current rigid manual manufacture to an innovative, flexible, automated and high added value production, achieving a considerable shift from resource dependent to knowledge based manufacturing. The main technological aspect to be developed in order to achieve the project objective is the manufacturing methodology related to the sheet metal components of the vehicle. For this, it is planned to use as starting point an emerging manufacturing technology for metal components, Dieless forming, based on incremental deformation and Rapid Manufacturing technologies. Time reductions of up to 60% in product development and 50% in manufacture as well as a 50% increase in capacity are expected. The SME partners, covering most of Europe’s vehicle niche markets will be key to developing the applicative knowledge within projects of commercial exploitation in terms of engineering services, together with new developments and the improvement of existing technologies from the RTD work carried out. The IAG partners will be responsible for a wide dissemination at international and multi-sector level. |
