Dr. Sankar Nallapati
Senior Engineering Specialist, GM
Dr. Sankar Nallapati
Senior Engineering Specialist, GM
we.CONECT Market Research & Intelligence consulted Dr. Sankar Nallapati from GM to outline ongoing challenges in automotive variant management. In the interview he deals with the question of how to balance the performance requirements between two vehicle platforms sharing common targets and parts and more issues regarding variant management.
Dr. Nallapati works in the Body CAE Closures group at GM as a Senior Engineering Specialist. He is a certified Black Belt in Design for Six Sigma Process and has published several technical papers in reputed conferences and journals. He earned his BSME from Osmania University, India, MSME from UK, Executive MBA from MSU and Ph.D in Mechanical Engineering from WV. He is also a licensed Professional Engineer in Michigan, USA.
Dr. Sankar Nallapati: The automotive industry is greatly affected by the lack of well-structured change and configuration management processes. In my opinion, the auto industry needs a strong and robust vehicle configuration life cycle management specifically for future self-driving cars. I think the main benefits will lie in improving the product quality and safety, thus reducing costly errors, eliminating lots of rework and allowing the capturing of latest product changes.
Modern innovations in the infotainment technology sector have impacted greatly in the automotive industry and variant management landscape. Specifically, there are recent advances in navigation systems – driver alerts, speedometer readings, collision alerts and likewise.
The main challenge is the question of how to balance the performance requirements between two vehicle platforms sharing the common parts and targets. This means that we need to meet the packaging constraints between two platforms. Furthermore, there is the need to optimize mass and increase fuel efficiency. Removing certain components is also a big challenge when sharing modular concepts.
Derivatives of variants, such as short wheel based and long wheel based influence modular systems strategy. There is the question of how variant management will drive the standardization of parts and global common designs. And how will variant management evolve and implement global work share?
I hope to discuss with peers about the question of how future CAD simulations will influence automotive design. And if we are able to launch or access simulation reports through CAD apps from cell phones.
I think it is very interesting to capture how market uncertainty impacts future platform investments in terms of new variant creation.
Interview partners: Serina Gummert and Dr. Sankar Nallapati