Lightweight Electric/Hybrid Vehicle Design

xxii Lightweight Electric/Hybrid Vehicle Design
Lean production is the approach pioneered by Toyota in which the elimination of unnecessary
steps and aligning all steps in a continuous flow, involves recombining the labour force into
cross-functional teams dedicated to a particular activity, such as reducing the weight of an EV
platform. The system is also defined by the objective of continually seeking improvement so that
companies can develop, produce and distribute products with halved human effort, space, tools,
time, and, vital to the customer, at overall halved expense.
Enterprise structures aim to exploit business opportunities in globally emerging products and
markets; to unite diverse skills and reapply them in long-term cooperative relationships; to allocate
leadership to the member best positioned to serve the activity involved regardless of the size of
company to which he/she belongs; and finally to integrate the internal creation of products with
the external consequences of the product. In EVs this would involve ensuring an adequate
operational infrastructure be provided by an electricity generating company, in combination with
local authorities. The products involved are those, such as the electric vehicle, that no one member
company on its own could design, manufacture and market. Partners in an EV enterprise might
also lead it into additional businesses such as power electronics, lift motors, low cost boat-hull
structures and energy storage systems for power station load levelling, for example. Internally the
use of combined resources in computer software technology could be used to develop simulation
packages that would allow EVs to be virtual tested against worldwide crashworthiness standards.
Managing of product external consequences could be facilitated by forming partnerships with
electricity generators, material recyclers and urban planners, finance, repair and auto-rental service
suppliers as well as government agencies and consumer groups.
0.3.1 COOPERATIVE NETWORKS
Unlike the Japanese networks of vertically integrated companies, such as the supply chains
serving Toyota, an interesting Italian experience is one of horizontal networking between
practitioners in specialist industries. Groups of small companies around Florence, in such areas
as food processing, furniture making, shoe manufacturing, have been unusually successful and,
in the case of tile manufacture, have managed to win an astonishing 50% of the world market.
Export associations have been formed on behalf of these small companies and at Modena even
a finance network has been formed between companies in which the participants guarantee one
another’s bank loans. The normal default rate of 7% for bank loans in this region has become
just 0.15% for this industrial network, demonstrating the considerable pride built up by companies
in meeting their repayment obligations. Commentators liken the degree of trust between
participants as being akin to that between different branches of traditional farming families.
Like the grandfathers of the farming families the ‘elders’ of the industrial networks offer their
services for such tasks as teaching apprentices in local colleges. The secret, some say, is that
these areas around Florence escaped the era of Fordism which affected northern Italy and many
other industrial centres of Europe.
The approach to setting up such a network is to build on elements of consensus and
commonalilty so as to create mutual facilities of benefit to groups of small companies wishing
to compete successfully against the international giants. Generally a network has a coordinating
structure of interlinked elements which are individuals, objects or events. The links can be in
the form of friendship, dependence, subordination or communication. In a dense network
everyone knows everyone else while some networks may, for example, comprise clusters of
dense elements with ties between clusters perhaps only involving one individual in each. The
specific definition of a network is the set of relations making up an interconnected chain for a
given set of elements formed into a coordinating structure.