How Innovation Can Benefit the Automotive Technologies During Pandemic

The automotive companies are also applying innovative technologies to provide remote working facilities to the employees during the COVID-19 pandemic.

FREMONT, CA: The COVID-19 pandemic is forcing the automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and suppliers to reconsider how they develop, design, and manufacture the new vehicles. The companies have closed offices and testing facilities to prevent the virus from spreading among the workforce. They have also started redesigning the production facilities to maintain production output and protect employee safety. Therefore, it has become essential for organizations to embrace and develop new processes and techniques to continue vehicle development, service, manufacturing, and sales.

Here are some of the effects of the pandemic on the automotive companies and how they responded to constrain it.

Remote work and virtual collaboration

It has become difficult for engineers, designers, and other office employees to maintain a collaborative and productive work culture due to the closure of offices, testing facilities, and other buildings. Moreover, essential stages in the vehicle design and engineering lifecycle have become dependent on face-to-face collaboration and the manual exchange of information. For example, in many situations, the engineers and designers are dependent on the in-person design reviews to attain the approval of the work or direct its refinement. Without such bodies for feedback, it task becomes complicated for the designing and engineering teams.

However, automotive companies are using the opportunity and creating a novel application of virtual technology to support partners, employees, and customers efficiently. The companies are applying technologies like VR and AR into the design review and approval procedures. The automakers are also utilizing VR and AR to allow virtual design reviews where the stakeholders can examine the design shared in the virtual space as the design and engineering teams are working remotely.

Redesigning manufacturing

The automotive companies have also rapidly modified their production facilities to ensure the safety of the manufacturing employees. The new development in the manufacturing facilities includes crucial in-person design reviews that can remove the optimizations that have been applied before the pandemic. For example, shared parts bins cannot be used anymore because they increase the operators' closeness and allow them to touch the same part during assembly.

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