In the present competitive scenario, the automotive industry association is facing challenges which can affect their business in the near future. However, they have now started concentrating more on how to resolve these issues of safety, environment, quality & service and weight & cost reduction. The material suppliers like Corus have joined hands with the association for facing such challenges. The challenges/issues which are faced by the automotive industry global are discussed below.
• Safety: Most of the new cars have to attain a classy five star ranking for the Euro-NCAP (European New Car Assessment Program) performance which ensures protection of vehicle occupants from collisions. The rising trend of accidents and crashes will now require more sophisticated crash structures which can cover the impact of the extensive potential accidents. In future, encouragement will be given for the other testing cases like rear impact and rollover or even the crash compatibility.
• Environment: Auto markets have to face a real challenge in terms of limited life cycle of their products. After a reasonable period, the cars are to be crashed and recycled. As a result of this limitation, now the auto carmakers have to be more cautious in using steel and plastic components by analyzing their capabilities of getting recycled. Steel components are recyclable, which is the main criterion of optimizing the utilization of the scarce resources and keeping the environment healthy. Also, old vehicles make more emissions of CO2 than the newer ones. So the decision to recycle the old used cars is more directed towards environment friendliness.
• Quality & Service: Quality of product and services are the two mainstays of the automotive industry global. Use of quality components in the innovations is a process of generating goodwill to the industry itself. Also, after sales service should be a satisfactory cause for the customers to get attracted towards the industry.
• Weight & Cost Reduction: Almost more than one fourth of the carbon dioxide emissions in European countries are the result of use of transport. One of the ways to reduce the emissions from the transport vehicles is to reduce their weights. A new approach called VA/VE (Value Analysis and Value Engineering) has been developed by Corus for reducing weights of the vehicles along with the advantage of cost reduction but without comprising on the quality of the product.
Automotive industry association has identified various other issues which are faced by them but the critical issues are the one discussed above. According to the association if the above issues are taken care of, then the rest will be just a matter of improvement.
Apr
08
