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23rd February 2009
Leyland Trucks wins Chairman's Award for Engineering Excellence
The Leyland Trucks Engineering Group has won the prestigious
Chairman's Award for Engineering Excellence for the Body Project. The project
was the result of a visionary business plan to take Leyland Trucks into a new
product sphere for the direct integration of bodybuilding into the truck
assembly process.
The objective of the Leyland Engineering Group was to design and
develop an innovative and competitive product portfolio of body types and
options capable of integration into the existing Leyland Assembly Plant, for
sales initially within the UK and Western Europe. For a new body supplier to
penetrate a market with long established customer and bodybuilder
relationships, the new bodyneeded to offer both higher quality and greater
convenience to potential customers. It was therefore critical that the new body
products be so well engineered as to provide immediate confidence to customers
that they were more reliable than existing market products, and also be
supported by the same engineering expertise behind the highly successful LF/CF
truck products. This entailed a steep learning curve for the engineering team
to identify potential product design weaknesses and ensure class leading
designs were included in the very first bodies produced.
To facilitate the programme timing and budget controls, significant
emphasis was put on Project Management and cross functional communication as
necessary to identify activities and departmental tasks for rapid resolution
and group feedback.
The accommodation of the body line within the existing
manufacturing facility could potentially have presented a huge impact to the
assembly operations, but resourceful utilisation of a previously used second
assembly track presented an efficient use of existing facilities. Subsequent
re-commissioning ensured minimal plant disruption and rapid availability of the
body build facility. In addition, new specialist manipulators were installed to
assist assembly of some large component types associated with body assembly in
a safe and efficient way.
Testing was an essential requirement of the project to better
understand competitor designs, industry standard materials and market design
practises to increase knowledge base. This information enabled the engineers to
subsequently challenge established industry designs and construction practices
for future product improvement within cost control models.
Competitor and Leyland design bodies were simultaneously durability tested at
the DAF test track to baseline component reliability and body structural
integrity. Instrumentation was fitted to the bodies during these tests to
measure actual stress/strain body inputs to support construction of Finite
Element analysis models.
Control of chassis and body build timing, now directly within
Leyland Assembly Plant, has already brought significant reduction in customer
delivery lead-times for a completed truck-bodied unit. This control will allow
further timing reductions, enhanced design features and build flexibility
opportunities to be realised in the future.
The increased product knowledge and awareness gained by the Design
Team on bodybuilding industry products and requirements during this
introduction period will provide Leyland with a robust platform for development
of exciting future body projects designed for build at and other Paccar sites.
Since launch in April 2007, over 750 vehicle body orders have been
completed and passed to sales.
“This was a successful project thanks to the experience & flexibility
of the Engineering team. The team moved quickly & went up a steep
learning curve to develop a first class body solution in a record time”. Ken
Wiseman, Lead Engineer
“Leyland Trucks Product Development Group is extremely proud to win this
prestigious honour. This was a challenging project which caused the team
to rethink conventional engineering strategies and boundaries. It allowed the
team to demonstrate it's flexibility and adaptability in a changing and dynamic
business environment”. Denis Culloty, Chief Engineer
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