Enabling Car Body Customization through Automotive Framing Systems Design

Abstract

In order to remain globally competitive, the automotive manufacturers implement unprecedented transformation of their operational practices, striving to assure world-class performance, both in product development and manufacturing. Some trends shaping automotive industry today, besides globalization, are growing customization and outsourcing of manufacturing functions. Manufacturing facilities have to possess high degree of flexibility enabling mass customization of production to achieve rapid response ability and cost-effective product delivery according to current market demand. This paper reviews current efforts used in automotive industry for manufacturing of vehicle bodies, including body-in-white modularization and growing reliance on collaborative digital manufacturing practices.

Multi-robot spot-welding cells for car-body assembly: Design and motion planning

“…The problem of the production tooling structure for multi-robot spot-welding assembly cells is considered in [13][14][15][16]. This approach focuses on the identification of the flexible elements of vehicle body-in-white and their interaction with the production tooling structure.…”