2.1.2 The Middle‐out Systems Engineering for Gray‐Box Item and Case Study of Automotive Lock Housing Assembly

Abstract

Abstract. Lock housing assembly is a vehicle component which is designed and manufactured by a 2nd tier supplier of a car maker. This paper showed a middle-out systems engineering approach for a gray box item development. In the case of gray box item development, the communication between a car maker and suppliers is a key success factor to overcome unclear and unbalanced design responsibility from the viewpoint of supplier. To show the middle-out systems engineering process, this paper addressed the development of a magnesium lock housing assembly. This project used some methodologies such as Quality Function Deployment (hereafter QFD) and functional flow diagram etc. to enhance communication capabilities. The customer requirements were developed with QFD while functional flow diagram was used to derive quality control parameters.