Article written with I. Bozza, U. Cugini, M. Lamperini and G Stefani. Published in June 1997 on 30th ISATA, Conference on Mechatronics and Automotive Electronics, Firenze, Italy – June 16-19 1997.
ISBN 094771987 and 094771992X
Abstract
The need to remain competitive in a fickle, ever-growing market forces automotive companies to internally quantify the costs and benefits of new production criteria and/or technologies, and to quickly design their practical introduction. This leads to continuous evaluation, rationalization, rearrangement, and re-engineering of the design and production processes; process modeling and analysis techniques can provide the necessary support for these activities. In this area, Ferrari launched a pilot project to design a meaningful automobile component. First, a functional model of the component design process, as it is currently performed, has been developed through iterated interviews with Ferrari design experts. The model, composed of a structured set of IDEF0 diagrams, an associated glossary, and textual annotations, immediately demonstrated its effectiveness in documenting the process, thereby providing a consistent basis for subsequent analysis and improvement phases. A set of possible enhancements has been identified and, step by step, designed so that the model of a new design process, as it is TO BE performed in the future, has been produced. Finally, to put this new process into practice, a comparative analysis of the two models has been conducted, and a set of organizational issues has been highlighted and submitted to Ferrari management.
Introduction
Companies from the automotive industry are facing an increasingly competitive market. Even a company operating in the top-end market, such as Ferrari S.p.A., has to internally quantify the costs and benefits arising from new production criteria and strategic technologies and, when they can provide real advantages, quickly design their practical introduction. This implies continuous evaluation, rationalization, rearrangement, and re-engineering of the design and production processes; process modeling and analysis techniques can provide the necessary support for these activities. In this area, Ferrari S.p.A. and the University of Parma jointly promoted a pilot project to experiment with the use of established process modeling and analysis methodologies in an industrial context.
The Ferrari technical management was looking for a solution that could provide a complete, precise map of the activities, resources, data, and control flows involved in the vehicle’s design and production processes. The project involved designers, production engineers, and managers from Ferrari and analysts from the University of Parma, and allowed them to evaluate:
- The kind of support that process modeling and analysis can provide to the management.
- the time and the resources required to produce a reliable and trustworthy model of an industrial problem and to analyze it;
- The level of collaboration that can be obtained from designers and production engineers is usually uninterested or unwilling to invest time in these kinds of activities.
To perform the modeling and analysis activities, an appropriate methodology was required. Based on previous experience at the University of Parma, the IDEF0 methodology was chosen because it has proven effective, uses a graphical language widely accepted by those involved in process modeling and analysis, and is supported by a large number of commercial software tools.
The choice of the case study
The first step of the project consisted of selecting the case study from the components of a typical Ferrari sports car.
The following criteria were used for the choice of the case study:
- Its design process shall be representative of those of other components of a typical vehicle; this ensures a general validity to the results of the experience.
- It shall be a component designed within the company and produced directly by Ferrari, or under the company’s direct control; this allows a direct, simple interaction with designers, production engineers, and other experts involved in the design and production processes.
- It shall be a component critical enough to impose heterogeneous constraints on the other vehicle components, such as dimensional and positional constraints, characteristics, etc.; this allows for modeling and analyzing the interdependencies between the component and the vehicle design processes.
- Its design process shall receive partially or fully defined constraints from the surrounding parts at different stages; this ensures that the selected component is also representative from the “concurrent engineering” perspective.
After a brief examination, the Ferrari design staff suggested focusing on the fuel tank’s design and production processes. As in any other vehicle, the fuel tank is designed to hold petrol for the engine; in a typical Ferrari configuration, it is located in the engine compartment, behind the passenger compartment.
The tank design is subject to numerous functional and mechanical constraints and must meet several specifications. In particular, in recent years, the adoption of stricter international regulations and the need for extra space in the cockpit have forced the company to rethink this part and its design process.
The main constraints for the fuel tank, as described by the Ferrari design staff, are:
- It shall hold enough petrol to ensure 300350 Km of economy for the vehicle.
- It shall fit within the motor space and meet all functional, structural, and dimensional requirements.
- It shall satisfy -in the basic model or in some special versions- all the national and regional regulations for the automotive industry, e.g., CEE 91/441 and USA 40CFR par 86. This constraint applies to each nation in which the vehicle will be registered and exported.
- It shall be easily accessible to reduce vehicle maintenance costs.
- It shall adopt a form of protection against the engine’s thermal radiation to ensure the fuel temperature remains below 60°-70° C.
- It shall comply with the fuel evaporation limits defined by national laws and regulations.
- It shall support strong accelerations and decelerations, typical of a sports car, without compromising the functions of the evaporation and fuel transport subsystems.
- It shall ensure safety in crash conditions and, in particular, be protected against lateral collisions.
- It shall be produced using a technology suitable for small series, as is customary for this category of vehicles.
The following fuel tank specifications were extracted from the technical sheets of the latest Ferrari model:
- Shape: one big tank behind the cockpit, placed in a central position, or two lateral tanks with some external protection.
- Capacity: 120 liters.
- Production technology: sheet metal bending.
In the past, as described by the Ferrari designers, this component was usually designed at the end of the vehicle design process, when all the other components were almost completely defined. This approach has recently been abandoned: the need to meet stricter requirements for the cockpit internal space and for fuel evaporation control reduced the design degrees of freedom for the fuel tank. Therefore, the tank design has been anticipated to allow the evaluation of different solutions and, eventually, the imposition of conditions on the chassis and surrounding parts. In particular, the relevant dimensions of the fuel tank and the presence of two large canisters for the elimination of petrol vapour require a preliminary evaluation of the volumes in the motor space.
The “As-Is” modeling phase
The fuel tank, its design, and its production processes change continuously for several reasons. The first reason is that its functional requirements are becoming increasingly stringent, as previously highlighted; other reasons include the company’s organizational changes and the engineering staff’s evolving experience. The attempt to extrapolate a general design process from the history of recent Ferrari models was discarded because the processes differed significantly. Therefore, it was decided to focus on the design process of the fuel tank of a specific Ferrari model: the last one completed was chosen.
As a preliminary step, the analysts organized a meeting with the technical management to identify the Ferrari personnel involved and their professional roles.
The activities began with interviews with the designers and production engineers about the main design activities, information flows, and related topics. From the interview minutes, a first high-level tentative model of the process was produced. Then, the first approach consisted of showing the preliminary IDEF0 diagrams to the interviewees to obtain the feedback needed to refine the model: the original plan was to iterate the discussion-refinement process until a consolidated and approved model was produced. This tentative, however, generated some problems. Unavoidably, each person, designer or production engineer, describes the process from his personal point of view with differences, not so obvious, with the descriptions obtained from other personal points of view: it is the responsibility of the analysts to reconcile the different descriptions in order to converge to a single model. As the model reached deeper levels of detail, the analysts had to assume a super partes position and show each expert only the set of IDEF0 diagrams of his competence.
In this phase of intensive interaction with the people, the IDEF0 graphical formalism was effective; its simplicity and descriptive power were appreciated by everyone. Usually, designers and production engineers don’t have time to read long textual documents and prefer to analyze and discuss immediate, synthetic graphical representations, such as the IDEF0 model.
It was observed that the representation immediately influenced how designers and production engineers view the process. For example, when the model highlighted an inconsistent procedure with unnecessary activity serialization, people unconsciously updated their mental model of the process and requested a corresponding change in the IDEF0 representation. While this is the first benefit of such an activity, the analysts sought to control it to obtain a true “As-Is” model of the process.
The result of this activity was a complete, readable IDEF0 model describing the design and production processes for the fuel tank of a typical Ferrari model. The IDEF0 model was integrated with a glossary defining all terms used, based on the definitions provided by the Ferrari people. Additionally, a list of process improvement suggestions from the designers and production engineers during the interviews was collected. The final document released didn’t have any corresponding or equivalent in the Ferrari internal documentation and served as an effective basis for analyzing the current process and defining future evolution and scenarios.
The “To-Be” modeling phase
At the beginning of the second phase, the analysts discussed the documents released during the “As-Is” modeling phase with technical management to define preliminary rationalization and re-engineering hypotheses. A few enhancements to the process were suggested by the design and production experts during the interviews and diagram discussions, while many others came directly from the IDEF0 diagram analysis. An IDEF0 model is a functional description of a process with a clear hierarchical structure that facilitates analysis, identification of critical activities, and the design of reorganization and optimization initiatives. For example, when an IDEF0 diagram doesn’t show a critical dependence among two or more boxes representing activities, it becomes evident that they can be reorganized in order to be performed concurrently, according to the “concurrent engineering” principles.
Based on the analysis results, the technical management defined the main hypothesis for the future evolution of the design and production processes, including the adoption of new design methodologies and the acquisition and use of new software tools. In particular, the main target of management was to reorganize the design and production processes to anticipate all decisions and to verify the component. This verification, as described in the “As-Is” model, was previously performed only at the end of the design phase, directly on the physical mock-up. To achieve this objective, a preliminary design of the fuel tank should be developed during the vehicle’s initial design stages. Besides, many physical characteristics of the fuel tank should be simulated using computer programs, while maintaining traditional verification on the physical mock-up. Starting from these inputs and under the direct control of technical management, the analysts reorganized the previous IDEF0 model to produce the “To-Be” model. In this phase, as in the previous one, the analysts had to iterate the discussion and diagram update activities many times.
In the transition from the “As-is” to the “To-Be” model, the analysts neglected some inessential levels of detail and focused on the main structure of the design and production processes. At the end of the work, they released a new, complete IDEF0 model describing a future scenario, as described and designed by the technical management, and including the designers’ and production engineers’ suggestions. The technical management released the “To-Be” model to the other Ferrari departments to illustrate the advantages of the planned rationalization and reorganization processes and to secure the resources and collaboration required to implement them.
Conclusions
The paper describes a pilot project jointly promoted by Ferrari S.p.A. and the University of Parma to experiment with process modeling and analysis methodologies within the Ferrari framework. The project involved designers, production engineers, and managers from Ferrari, as well as analysts from the University of Parma. The project, focused on the design and production processes for the fuel tank, took about 6 months and produced 2 distinct IDEF0 models. The first model, called the “As-Is” model, describes the current (at the time of the analysis) design and production processes; the second model, called the “To-Be” model, was derived from the first one, taking into account the reorganization and rationalization plans of the technical management. The project demonstrated the practicality and significant advantages of process modeling and analysis in an industrial setting. The experience highlighted some non-obvious problems in applying the IDEF0 methodology, mainly due to the knowledge elicitation process. Finally, the project shows that, when coordinated by external analysts, modeling and analysis activities can provide immediate and medium-term benefits: the “To-Be” model serves as an effective base for future process reorganization and rationalization initiatives.
Acknowledgements
We wish to thank the designers, production engineers, and managers from Ferrari S.p.A. involved in this project for their active collaboration and support.
References
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[3] Integration definition for function modeling (IDEF0). Draft Federal Information Processing Standards Publication 183 (FIPSPUB 183). FIPS, USA, 1993.[4] François B. Vernadat. Enterprise Modeling and Integration: principles and applications. Chapman & Hall, London UK, 1996.
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