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I M P R OV I N G R E S O U R C E U T I L I S AT I O N I N P R OTOT Y P E V E H I C L E PRODUCTION CHRISTIAN WECKENBORG, KARSTEN KIECKHÄFER, THOMAS S. SPENGLER, PATRICIA BERNSTEIN AND MARKO HAHN
IN THE AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY, prototype vehicle production is an essential step within the product development process. Before production ramp-up and launch of any new car model, many prototype vehicles are required, mostly for testing but also for internal and external presentations. For the Volkswagen brand (VW), approximately 3000 of those prototype vehicles are manufactured annually by 1200 employees of the Volkswagen Pre-Production
Center (VPC). Due to shortages in manufacturing capacity, a large portion of production orders of VW prototype vehicles is outsourced to external manufacturing service providers every year. The shortages are mainly driven by an increasing product variety along with more extensive tests of functionality and an increase in electric vehicle components. Since outsourcing of orders is very costly, increasing the internal manufacturing volume is a reasonable
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