Optimizing the Rear Fascia Cutline Based On Investigating Deviation Sources of the Body Panel Fit and Finish

A vehicle’s exterior fit and finish, in general, is the first system to attract customers. Automotive exterior engineers were motivated in the past few years to increase their focus on how to optimize the vehicle’s exterior panels split lines quality and how to minimize variation in fit and finish addressing customer and market required quality standards. The design engineering’s focus is to control the deviation from nominal build objective and minimize it. The fitting process follows an optimization model with the exterior panel’s location and orientation factors as independent variables. This research focuses on addressing the source of variation “contributed factors” that will impact the quality of the fit and finish. These critical factors could be resulted from the design process, product process, or an assembly process. An empirical analysis will be used to minimize the fit and finish deviation. Experimental approach as well as Response Surface Methodology “RSM” will be used for developing the analysis. Models that accurately describe the response values by experiments will help identify the most critical factors and an analytical model and RSM will be used to optimize the acceptable values on these factors. Expected results are to improve the exterior quality that show the consistency of the gab and flush along the rear fascia cutline as well as reduce the offset issue.