The European automotive industry has been a European success. It is world technology leader and a net exporter, mainly due to its ability to design and produce well engineered, well performing and reliable products. The challenge for the future is to maintain its success of the past by designing and producing for the consumer intelligent, enticing vehicles and related high value services that are safe, energy-efficient, comfortable, reliable and available at reasonable cost. The ultimate success of such an endeavour would depend on its ability to continuously innovate the overall process (value chain) from design to production for an ever increasing volume of product variants and deliver them fast to the discerning customer wherever he/she may be. The ManuFuture platform proposes a long term technology plan that would develop the necessary high-tech manufacturing assets for the manufacturing industries to meet the challenges for delivering high added value products such as automotive vehicles to the world. The Road Transport platform contains within its basic set-up the total aspects of design and production of future automotive products produced in a mass customised manufacturing environment. It is considered that the combined effort of the two platforms in developing in co-operation intelligent and networked automotive products within an intelligent and networked manufacturing environment may be the answer in the quest for sustaining European automotive leadership in a world for 2030 and beyond. (A).Only abstract (as above) is available from the conference proceedings. For the covering abstract of the conference see ITRD E212343.
Abstract