مدیریت چرخه عمر محصول برای توسعه خودرو با تمرکز بر یکپارچه سازی تامین کننده

The past years have seen growing investments in the area of product lifecycle management (PLM) by the automotive sector. Due to its complex development cycle, the automotive OEM has begun to adopt the supplier integration into its product development process. To respond to this new trend, the PLM system needs to evolve to support the collaboration and partnership management between the automotive OEM and associated suppliers. Regarding the depth of collaboration, the integration of supplier into OEM process chain has been defined in two ways, quasi-supplier integration and full supplier integration. To enable the success of supplier integration, one of the PLM tasks is to control the collaboration between the automotive OEM and its suppliers, through deciding on an appropriate supplier integration way. Meanwhile, aiming at reduction of the expenditure for partnership management and coordination, the automotive OEM tends to have direct connections with limited number of capable and effective suppliers, called system suppliers. Other suppliers, called sub-suppliers no longer directly communicate with the automotive OEM, but instead with a system supplier who works closer with the automotive OEM and deals with the task of sub-supplier management and coordination. To keep up with these tasks above, a PLM framework is established in a broader perspective in this paper, enabling supplier integration and partnership management in the automotive development process all along the life cycle. Finally, an automotive case study is presented to illustrate the PLM implementation procedure focusing on supplier integration.

The automotive industry is now under increasing pressure to maintain their places in the market. To improve their ability to innovate, get products to market faster, and reduce errors, the automotive manufacturers have been continuing to improve their development and management abilities through advances in computer-aided design (CAD), computer-aided process planning (CAPP), computer-assisted manufacturing (CAM), computer-aided engineering (CAE), concurrent engineering (CE), product data management (PDM), business process reengineering (BPR), etc. [1]. It is worthy of pointing out that the past years have seen growing investments in the area of product lifecycle management (PLM) by the automotive industries [2], [3], [4] and [5]. For example, companies from Boeing to GM to Proctor & Gamble are using PLM technology, making it a $16 billion industry in 2004. GM credits PLM initiatives with decreasing time to market from 48 to 18 months [6]. Automotive industry leaders such as Autoliv, Eaton, Honda, and Johnson Controls are driving success by using the MatrixONE solutions [7]. Regarding the importance of PLM to the automotive industry, Reale and Burkett make a conclusion which is “The Smarter the Car, the More Automakers Need PLM” [8]. PLM can be considered as a business strategy intended to link all information, people, and processes associated with a product from birth through end-of-life disposal [9]. Similar to other types of products, it is generally recognized that PLM for automotive development needs to span common product lifecycle phases from customer requirements definition, product design/simulation/analysis, production planning, manufacturing quality management, service and guaranty management, as well as recycling [10]. It is necessary to note that different PLM implementation patterns have been derived according to corresponding industry context and product characteristics [10]. The automotive industry tends to have structured process emphasizing configuration traceability and accountability persistence, and the automotive product development lifecycle is considered to follow the pattern of the stage-gate model [2] and [11]. Meanwhile, automotive suppliers are seeking new ways to strictly contain costs without sacrificing innovative, feature-rich products, and platforms. With the demands for faster innovation, higher quality, and increased regulation, it becomes apparent that the winning automotive suppliers will be those that leverage product innovations to rapidly develop new platforms and win new programmes. Therefore, for the automotive OEM industries, there is an important new trend of automotive development which is increasing supplier involvement or integration into the product development process chain. To respond to the trend of supplier integration for automotive development, the evolution of PLM framework and tools is very important and critical. Focusing on the supplier integration and collaboration, the direction of PLM for automotive development is investigated in this paper. The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 explains the rational of supplier integration for automotive development. As PLM is the front of new challenges to enable successful supplier integration for automotive development, it needs to be responsible of controlling the collaboration between the automotive OEM and suppliers as well as managing the partnership between them. Therefore, Section 3 presents two types of supplier integration (quasi-supplier integration and full supplier integration) according to the collaboration depth; Section 4 discusses the partnership interface between the automotive OEM and suppliers. In Section 5, a PLM framework to enable supplier integration for automotive development is given. In Section 6, a case study is included. The last section concludes the paper.

It is widely acknowledged that the automotive industry is more than ever obliged to improve its development strategy according to the increasing pressure of product innovation and complexity, the emergence of new technology, the changing market demands and increasing level of customer awareness. The provision of appropriate product lifecycle management in a complete and holistic manner has become crucial for the automotive development. As the automotive OEM has begun to adopt the supplier integration into the development process, new challenges rise for PLM to support the collaboration and partnership management between the automotive OEM and the supplier. Regarding the depth of collaboration, the integration of supplier into OEM process chain has defined in two ways, quasi-supplier integration and full supplier integration. To enable the success of the supplier integration, one of the PLM tasks is to control the collaboration between automotive OEM and supplier, through deciding the appropriate supplier integration way. To reduce expenditures for partnership management and coordination, some capable and effective suppliers, called system suppliers, are suggested to be chosen to have direct connections to the automotive OEM. Other suppliers, called sub-suppliers do no longer directly communicate with the automotive OEM, but instead are under the management and coordination of system supplier. To keep up with the trends of current automotive development, a PLM framework is established in a broader perspective. The PLM implementation practice has shown the PLM is not a simple undertaking, and it entails multitude of personnel, techniques, and organization.