A Methodology to Integrate Environmental Performance for Assessment of Automotive Products During the Component Design and Manufacturing Phases

A methodology is devised to enable key people directly responsible within an organisation for the automotive component design and manufacture, to environmentally assess a wide variety of products that they produce. The research is applicable in those organisations that have adopted QS9000rrS16949 Quality Systems and have a robust Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) process in place. Research was conceived around the hypothesis that there is a need to integrate automotive product design and manufacture with environmental performance to enable environmental considerations to be taken into account in daily decision-making practices. A concept for integrating environmental performance objectives into product variety management was derived by analysing current methods deployed in the collaborating organisation, Federal Mogul Corporation. The findings were then critically compared with several other companies nominated by Federal Mogul and Coventry University to remove any'bias or preconceptions that existed. In addition, a review of current practices and management systems through a literature review was 'presented establishing useful guidelines that can be used in the creation of a suitable .methodology. This research concluded that a great deal ofprevious work has concentrated on managing the design and manufacture of a wide variety of products for operations management and does not include environmental consideratiqns. There is also limited study on environmental process planning which addresses issues with scrap, defects and by-product reductions. Many techniques and standards are available (e.g. Life Cycle Assessment, Design for Environment, Environmental Management Systems) but all have inherent weaknesses and none are related directly to the APQP process. Case studies confirmed that all the organisations had an Environmental Management System based on 1S014000 but the approach has been reactive and compliance based. The APQP process· did not facilitate the suppliers to analyse or document environmental issues while building quality into the range of products manufactured. Different departments and APQP practitioners within an organisation had different t11us towards' environmental perfonnance and product variety manufacture. The APOP practitioners did not have a comprehensive methodology, support tools including the practice of working in unison to achieve environmental improvement goals during the application ofAPQP logic for the design & manufacture ofproduc~s. Therefore, the proposed methodology consisted offour main phases: • Phase 1 - Encouraged organisations to devise and make· available their environmental and product management policies and strategies.' • Phase 2 - Guided a company to identify the pre-requisites that were required to streamline their organisation to focus on the environment and product quality. • Phase 3 - Emphasised the application of an environmentally based proc~ss planning system framework for streamlining the organisation's internal product management operations and systems. • Phase 4 - Encouraged the use of unique tools arid techniques for product environmental perfonnance assessment. Six case studies were used to evaluate the frameworks and models in key organisations. All case studies realised cost-savings whilst improving product/process characteristics. Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) posed by the methodology were docfunented during the application ofthe case studies. The aim . of this research was successfully achieved by satisfying all of the research objectives. In conclusion, the following has been achieved by this research: • By deploying the research methodology, the objective of evaluating current manufacturing practices for automotive product management was achieved in which, gaps that existed between product design/manufacture and consideration of environmental impacts were identified. • By identifying the suitable requirements to close these gaps through the research methodology, the objective of producing an integrated methodology to ensure product design/manufacture met environmental requirements and aid decision making practices was achieved. • By further enhancing the methodology to be more robust, the objective of developing frameworks, models, perfonnance indicators, tools and techniques to support the methodology was achieved. • By applying the methodology in real-life applications, the objective of evaluating and validating the methodology using industrial based test cases was achieved.