The bar is high for OEMs as they endeavor to meet the ever-growing demand and market pressures. As engineering design sets the stage for manufacturing and service, it is critical for engineering teams to recognize the interactions of people with their proposed products and processes to assure ease of production and assembly.

The confidence to push the threshold of product performance in future manufacturing processes requires enterprises to weigh the potential trade-offs of the product’s cost, quality, safety, function, and use of resources. The best way to meet energy efficiency, safety, comfort, and lightweight goals is to evaluate, early on, if a proposed product is practical when it comes to the selected material type, shape and geometry, production costs, and logistics requirements.

Having to work with the conventional manufacturing methods and simultaneously adapt to new concepts and to introduce novel materials and processes in order to increase the range, efficiency and to improve upon their carbon footprint, while maintaining all safety. Going forward, product development decisions cannot be made without cross-checking the manufacturing feasibility of those products. The manufacturing requirements of the last century's products are transforming to suit modern aspirations:

• Manufacturing disciplines historically associated with smaller production volumes will be challenged to ramp up to the needs of their expanded use in manufacturing (E.g., composites, with relatively low annual production yield, needs to increase by several degrees of magnitude)
• Manufacturing processes used to produce vital vehicular structures will not be monolithically delivered by a single manufacturing industry domain (E.g., stamping and welding are not the sole sources of automotive Body-in-White)

Safe, Productive, and Sustainable Human-Centric Operations

Break the silos between design, manufacturing, and maintenance. Decrease lead times to meet the start of production, at controlled quality and cost. See how to validate product integration early in a human-centric way. Understand with confidence, that integrating human interactions through the product development lifecycle, is the way forward to predict and mitigate risk to assure on-time delivery, optimal performance, and a safe and efficient work environment.