Clustering regional-specific requirements as a methodology to define the modules of a car concept

Abstract

The increasing globalization in the automotive industry creates worldwide new target groups. Because of that, regional-specific requirements have to be considered in the vehicle development process. This increases the complexity in conception of the vehicle's design. In order to create vehicles economically the depth of production must not go up disproportionately. To develop systematically various factors in the vicinity of a vehicle and further to demonstrate them, in relation to the technical characteristics of a vehicle concept, a model was created in the early stages of the developing process. Finally the characteristics will be clustered to so-called 'prototypes', which also summarize required similar characteristics from the customer. In this case the prototypes represent a compromise between the large numbers of regional-specific alternatives and less economical ones. © Springer-Verlag London 2013.