The car industry has witnessed major changes over the years, thanks to the growing number of external forces that changed the decades-old practices of manufacturing. This paper analyses the important forces in the last two decades that have had a major impact on the car manufacturing practices. The paper provides statistics on the production figures of cars in various countries and analyses the external forces such as Euro Emission Standards, outsourcing, introduction of alternate fuels and the advent of computers in the automobile industry. Among the various external factors, environmental issues such as air pollution, global warming and ozone layer depletion have become one of the major forces that have influenced the design and manufacturing of automobiles. Governments across the world have created regulations such as the Euro Standards and US Emission Standards that specify the maximum amount of gases such as nitrous oxide that is allowed in the exhaust gases of automobiles.
[...] Introduction The past two decades brought in a number of factors that have influenced the automotive industry and brought in large-scale changes with respect to the technology used in the manufacture, technology of the cars, requirements by the automobile manufacturers to comply with EURO emission norms and the outsourcing phenomenon in the automotive industry. This paper provides an analysis of these factors and the changes that have brought in the automotive field. This report focuses on the manufacturing of passenger vehicles or cars as they are called. [...]
[...] This development tremendously reduced the design time and increased the predictably of the product and designers could better translate customer demands and show how the final product would look like (Smith et all, 2005). Conclusion The car manufacturing industry has been influenced by some strong factors in the past two decades and these forces have changed the way automobiles are manufactured and used. Some of the forces are the outsourcing of components and there is a gradual shift in outsourcing components to the Asian countries. [...]
[...] Studies conducted by India Business show that auto component exports made to US in 2004-05 were about $ 1.4 billion and this trend is rising. Asian countries such as India have their own home-grown automobile industry and these have what are claimed to be ‘world class manufacturing facilities'. India has a tremendous pool of skilled labour and with the advent of sophisticated and mass production machines, good quality assurance and a skilled ancillary industry, the auto component industry has grown by (Automobile Sector, 2006). [...]
[...] Production Statistics of Car manufactured in (Statistics Production, 2006) to see detailed production statistics. Many large automobile manufacturers such as GM and Ford are facing a down turn. Currently, the automobile industry is being dominated by the big three Japanese firms namely Toyota, Nissan and Honda. While its American counter part namely Ford, general motors and Chrysler have been experiencing “trouble”(The Economist, Sept 2). The Big Three American companies have been losing profits, cutting jobs, and even closing plants In fact, it has been claimed that best hope for General Motors was to join Renault and Nissan” (The Economist, Sept 2 2006) since last year 2006 General Motors has incurred $ 8.6 billion losses. [...]
[...] Technology advances that influenced the industry include the introduction of agile manufacturing systems, computers and robots and the use of cemented carbide cutting tools. There is an increasing trend in using alternative fuels such a bio diesel; methane, compressed natural gas and car manufacturers have to bear the expenses of making the automobiles run on these fuels. Appendix Table 1. Production Statistics of Car manufactured in (Statistics Production, 2006) America America Union Table 2. Number of UK based automobile manufacturing companies (Manufacturing Statistics, 2006). [...]
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