Now future

Eco-efficient paint shops of today

Eco-efficient paint shops of today

Confidential

Outcome

The world leader in automotive paint shop planning and implementation, both for the modernisation of existing plants and the construction of new production lines launched a complete new solution allowing for full flexibility, scalability and efficiency of the car building industry.


The concept of the paint shop of the future allows for the highest levels of flexibility. The paint shop of the future breaks away from the traditional layout used in the automotive industry and introduces a modular concept. The body parts are now painted in boxes rather than on a production line. 



Replaced conveyor standard with the flexible box concept and combined exterior and interior painting in a single-spaced solution, equally equipped for base coat  and clear coat.

Overspray free technology with 100% application efficiency, 0% waste, 30% lower VOC emissions, and 30% less energy consumption.

Role

Leadership

Product Strategy

User Research

Prototyping & Testing

Visual design

Challenge

Further increases in fossil fuel prices are expected in the medium term, while the costs for regenerative plants are falling as the number of installed plants grows.


As an answer to tomorrow’s challenges is this paint shop of the future—one that is flexible and scalable and offers efficiency across all the processes. 


A paint shop that stands for sustainability and optimised, digitally supported processes.


Approach

In response to these ongoing challenges around sustainability and rising energy costs, the client became the first supplier to electrify all the body ovens in its portfolio.


The first reference project with green electricity – in use since 2018 in a paint shop in Scandinavia – proved that was is no change in the drying process quality, which remains at the highest level.


Conducted UX workshops with the SME stakeholders and the project core team. 


Identified features, functionalities, and requirements during the onsite Design Thinking Workshops.
Aligned biweekly with the Solution Architects, POs and the experts in the field.

Created existing processes mapping to align with real-life scenarios and better understand the process and workflow in order to translate this into features. user flows and journey maps.


Put together a high-level navigation concept and afterwards the information architecture blueprint to display a clear overview of the product components and to better identify how the features are connected and how they relate to each other. Created high-fidelity wireframes.


Probed result through field test, making efficiency adjustments to provide with optimal configuration parameters.

The biggest energy consumer in the painting process is body drying. And its share of the CO2 footprint is accordingly high. By switching from natural gas to a sustainable energy source, like green electricity, it is possible to reduce a conventional CO2 emission by about 40%, which is a big step towards climate-neutral production and greater supply security.


Assessed proposed changes to understand the technical implications, if there is any impact on the delivery timeline, having in mind at all times the business and user goals. Aligned with the technical team regarding requirements and constraints. 


Held internal meetings for review with the project team to ensure that the proposed UX and UI solutions can be implemented in the agreed timeline. Documentation is added in a dedicated Confluence space.

The UX representatives provided support to the project team (development, QA, PM) in order to understand the design solution and deliverables and use them accordingly. 


Validated the implementation so it meets the design requirements and constraints.

Identified the stakeholders and responsibilities. Requested and studied the documentation. Developed glossary and clarified terminologies. Aligned communication and tailored the UX process to the project needs. Settled expectations on timeline and deliverables. 


Conducted UX workshops with the stakeholders and the project core team. 
Identified features, functionalities, and requirements during UX Discovery Workshops with the stakeholders.
Aligned internally with the Solution Architect.

Created existing processes mapping to align with real-life scenarios and better understand the process and workflow in order to translate this into features. user flows and journey maps.
Put together a high-level navigation concept and afterwards the information architecture blueprint to display a clear overview of the product components and to better identify how the features are connected and how they relate to each other. Created high-fidelity wireframes.


Assessed proposed changes to understand the technical implications, if there is any impact on the delivery timeline, having in mind at all times the business and user goals. Aligned with the technical team regarding requirements and constraints. 

Held internal meetings for review with the project team to ensure that the proposed UX and UI solutions can be implemented in the agreed timeline. Documentation is added in a dedicated Confluence space.

The UX representatives provided support to the project team (development, QA, PM) in order to understand the design solution and deliverables and use them accordingly. 


Validated the implementation so it meets the design requirements and constraints.

Identified the stakeholders and responsibilities. Requested and studied the documentation. Developed glossary and clarified terminologies. Aligned communication and tailored the UX process to the project needs. Settled expectations on timeline and deliverables. 


Conducted UX workshops with the stakeholders and the project core team. 
Identified features, functionalities, and requirements during UX Discovery Workshops with the stakeholders.
Aligned internally with the Solution Architect.

Created existing processes mapping to align with real-life scenarios and better understand the process and workflow in order to translate this into features. user flows and journey maps.
Put together a high-level navigation concept and afterwards the information architecture blueprint to display a clear overview of the product components and to better identify how the features are connected and how they relate to each other. Created high-fidelity wireframes.


Assessed proposed changes to understand the technical implications, if there is any impact on the delivery timeline, having in mind at all times the business and user goals. Aligned with the technical team regarding requirements and constraints. 

Held internal meetings for review with the project team to ensure that the proposed UX and UI solutions can be implemented in the agreed timeline. Documentation is added in a dedicated Confluence space.

The UX representatives provided support to the project team (development, QA, PM) in order to understand the design solution and deliverables and use them accordingly. 


Validated the implementation so it meets the design requirements and constraints.

Solution

The paint shop of the future: flexible, scalable, efficient

A complete concept consisting of electrically heated ovens and electric exhaust air after treatment. Electric heating uses the RTO method, which decouples heating and air pollution control. Decentralised, compact individual units provide heat. The units have the additional benefit of streamlining the layout since large duct systems for supplying heat are no longer required. Highly efficient heat recovery means that manufacturers can use the energy in the exhaust airflow almost completely for heating fresh air. This reduces energy losses via the exhaust air to an unprecedentedly low level.



Another energy-efficient tool is the predictive fresh and exhaust air control system. The intelligent software regulates the oven’s electricity consumption by tailoring the energy demand to the exact number of bodies in the oven and reducing consumption during operation at partial load. Switching to skidless conveyor technology like traverse technology also saves energy since the oven heats less material which needs to cool down later.


The concept of the paint shop of the future allows for the highest levels of flexibility. The paint shop of the future breaks away from the traditional layout used in the automotive industry and introduces a modular concept. The body parts are now painted in boxes rather than on a production line. These boxes are scalable and this makes them ideal for a wide variety of component sizes and applications. Instead of fixed cycle times, there are requirement-based process times. New models can easily be integrated at any time, which increases the overall availability of the plant. In combination with intelligent IIoT solutions, the paint shop of the future can be adapted to any production scenario.

Innovative car body curing from the inside

A new generation of car body curing.

The heating and cooling of the car body take place primarily from the inside.


Air flow control produces the best possible top coat appearance. The car body is heated up from the inside, resulting in even heating and cooling conditions. Consequently, flow velocities on the outer body surface are minimal, greatly improving the appearance and distribution of the top coat and thus the surface quality. Leading paint suppliers have proven with their own research that paint curing with this new standard produces less waves and significantly improves quality.


The principle of heating from the inside reaches massive car body components of the framework, e.g. rocker panels, more directly than conventional systems. This means optimum heat transfer from the hot air flow to difficult-to-access parts/areas. What’s more, it reduces the required process time for heating up the body by up to 30%.

Best for EVs

Electric vehicles need – among other things – well-reinforced rocker panels to protect the batteries in the event of a side impact. This procedure dries these rocker panels with their increased material thickness far better than conventional ovens, and prevents overheating in thinner parts of the body shell.

The same goes for future multi-substrate car body generations with new material combinations and new joining methods. Here, specifically, the new drying method reduces thermal component stresses to ensure increased process reliability.

Did you know that a single website visit takes up an average of 1.67 grams of CO²?


Design for Energy Efficiency.

Use simple colour palette and avoiding excessive use of animations or other visual elements that require high levels of processing power.


This web page is cleaner than 79% of web pages tested.

Only 0.20g of CO2 is produced every time someone visits my web page.






 © 2023 by Alexandru Botezatu

Did you know that a single website visit takes up an average of 1.67 grams of CO²?


Design for Energy Efficiency.

Use simple colour palette and avoiding excessive use of animations or other visual elements that require high levels of processing power.


This web page is cleaner than 79% of web pages tested.

Only 0.20g of CO2 is produced every time someone visits my web page.






 © 2023 by Alexandru Botezatu