15 Jul Automotive material uncertainty & Business Risk

AUTOMOTIVE MATERIAL UNCERTAINTY & BUSINESS RISK AT THE CONCEPT PHASE USING EXISTING METADATA

PhD Thesis

Robert Ian Mills

Student number 149006958

University of Bath

Department of Mechanical Engineering

December 2018

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Abstract

New product development has attracted a significant amount of academic attention, and

its application within the automotive sector is no exception. The research presented in

this thesis places its focus at the concept phase of the process and seeks to identify the

commercial uncertainties allowing them to be treated as business risks for mitigation

during the design phase of the new product development. Within this research, the

attention is on the uncertainties concealed within the tier 1 cost base, commercial

uncertainties, such as sales and product function are out of scope. The presented

research develops a hybrid methodology which builds upon existing cost estimating

tools and existing metadata to provide a structured identification of the uncertainties and

the scale of business risks to which new product developments are exposed. The hybrid

methodology is first applied to a simple example to present the fundamental notions and

then to the automotive domain to demonstrate its application. The results obtained

confirm that the hybrid methodology allows uncertainty, hitherto hidden during new

product development concept phase evaluation to be realized as potential business risks.

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