Detailed Engineering Design during Automotive Product Development

This chapter describes steps that are performed in the detailed engineering design phase of an automotive product development program. It involves consideration of all engineering and manufacturing requirements concurrently with the help of inputs from many multidisciplinary teams to ensure that all product requirements, trade-offs between product attributes, and risks are studied and the configuration of the whole product along with the design of all systems within the product are developed. The engineers assigned to the vehicle program follow the progress of teams involved in designing various vehicle systems and provide necessary guidance and data. The sequence of steps and outputs of the steps are generally identified in the systems engineering management plan, product development process, and/or engineering design manuals prepared by the company developing the product. The detailed engineering design process generally begins after the concept selection phase. Many different design tools such as computer-aided design, computer-aided engineering, design of manufacturing, design for assembly, and design for sustainability are applied concurrently by different specialists to ensure that the product will meet its functional and sustainability goals. Many verification tests are conducted at component level and progressively at higher levels as components are assembled into higher level systems.