Optimisation of production of electric vehicles based on configure-to-order

Abstract

Electric vehicles are gaining popularity in the market as there is rapidly growing awareness regarding their benefits leading to higher adoption rates. Despite the speedily growing market, there is high uncertainty in this industry as it is still an upcoming product and there is time for mainstream adoption of EV. The manufacturers of electric vehicles that provide customisation in customer orders and adopt configure to order production model, face several challenges. This report addresses these challenges and provides a viable methodology for optimisation of the electric vehicle configure to order production. The methodology utilised in this study is to clearly define the issue faced by the manufacturers of EVs. Following this, a detailed study of the electric vehicle manufacturing process was done to identify the objectives and constraints involved. A simulation model was constructed to represent the production system and an optimization study was conducted through the data collected. There were two types of order variety identified, low and high variety of customisation, for which evaluation of two production strategies was carried out. These include, first in first out method and batching of the customer orders. The report discusses the findings of the strategies and the implications of their execution. Thus, the analysis contributes to the development of a viable methodology to optimise the production of EVs which is applicable to companies of varying scale and offerings.