SHEET METAL STAMPING IN AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY
STEEL PANELS IN CAR BODY STRUCTURE
Ever increasing competition in automotive industry demands productivity improvements and unit cost reduction. The manufacturing engineers and production managers of car body panels are changing their strategy of operation. The days of ‘a simple washer to a very complicated fender, all in plant stamping facility’, are gone. In-house manufacturing facilities preferably produce only limited number of major car panels, Fig. 5.1.
Fig. 5.1 Major Panels of Car Body
An automotive plant today produces some 40~50 critical panels per model of car in-house, that require some 100~150 dies.. Criteria for taking decision about the panels to be manufactured in-house vary from company to company. Very lately, the stamping plant of the automobile manufacturers includes the types of panels as given below in-house:
1. External (skin) panels, such as fenders, bonnet, decklid, roof, side panels, doors, etc. Some of these are two panels in a set as left hand and right hand
2. Internal mating panels, such as bonnet inner, decklid inner or door inner deciding subassembly quality
3. Dimensionally critical inner panels that are complicated either because of their complex shape or severe draw condition, such as, floor pans, dash panel, etc.
Automanufacturers prefer to procure the medium and small size panels from vendors depending on the availability (nearer facilities are preferred) and their capability to meet demanded specifications. Some are even farming out the major subassemblies such as doors to specialised vendors. Trends are for farming out as much as possible. The
automobile plants are trying to concentrate on assembly operations, leaving specific technology related manufacturing, such as machining and pressing as separate facilities.