Cost-effective manufacturing process for plastic components in automotive industry

A seemingly increasing trend in the automotive industry is the prevalence of hybrid and electric vehicles. For Lear Corporation, a global automotive supplier of seating and electronic systems, this has caused a decrease in quantity of their products as these types of vehicles are manufactured at lower rates of volumes. An essential element of the electronic system provided by Lear is the wire harness. The wire harness is fastened and protected through plastic components called channels or brackets. These channels are fabricated through injection molding, one of the most common plastic manufacturing processes which offer many benefits. However, injection molding entails high upfront costs which are not suitable for the lower scales of production Lear expect. This prompted the company to seek other alternative processes and thus the idea of this thesis arose.The purpose of the thesis was to identify, evaluate and present alternative manufacturing processes that could potentially replace the current process. Furthermore, the possibility of decreasing the costs of the current process and making it viable for low volume production was explored.The study presented a total of nine common plastic manufacturing processes and subsequently performed a screening where processes deemed incompatible, in terms of aspects such as part complexity, size, volume and cost, were dismissed and processes deemed compatible in relation to the desired application were evaluated further. The processes kept for further examination were injection molding and additive manufacturing.Injection molding and additive manufacturing were evaluated further and ultimately cost estimates for each process were requested to manufacturers in order to make a cost analysis and further study the feasibility of respective process.The cost estimates and subsequent cost analysis indicated that the ideal and most cost-effective option for Lear would be changing the injection molding tool to MUD, aluminum or steel grade 738. This allows Lear to utilize the benefits of injection molding while decreasing the mold cost and upfront costs for the injection molding process substantially. Another proposal presented was to merge injection molding and additive manufacturing in a method called bridge production. This would allow Lear to increase flexibility and reduce lead time