Digital Transformation of Suspension Component Manufacturing

Digital transformation technologies have led to modern suspension component manufacturing splitting into multiple tiers of production quality, reliability, and suitability for current and emerging vehicle designs. The use of advanced technologies to design, prototype, test, manufacture, monitor, assemble and supply auto parts to global OEM and aftermarket markets has revolutionised suspension component manufacturing.

Digital transformation of suspension component design & engineering

Digital technology can be applied to every aspect of suspension component design, engineering, production and management. The digital transformation of our business model has been a major factor in driving SH Auto Parts to become a global leader in the manufacturing and supply of IATF certified Tier 1 OEM suspension components and after market parts into the global automotive industry.

• Auto part design using CAD and CAE technologies
• Digital suspension component tooling design
• Virtual testing & prototyping of suspension component designs
• 3D scanning and modeling of components for rapid prototyping
• ODM improvements to OEM suspension components

Digital control enhances suspension component production

Quality, manufacturing capacity and flexibility of production are perhaps the most important characteristics of suspension component production in the minds of both OEM automotive manufacturers and aftermarket parts suppliers. The digital transformation of our business model enables us to guarantee all three of these desirable characteristics.

• Digital twinning for real time monitoring & predictive modeling
• Hot swap robotic loading jigs on CNC machine lines for parallel component production
• Innovative, computer controlled high tensile steel forming handling systems
• Continuous environmental & energy monitoring at our Smart Factory in Taiwan

IATF certified quality, replicability & flexible manufacturing of suspension components

SH Auto Parts is IATF 16949 certified for manufacturing Tier 1 suspension components. We are able to manufacture over 7 million components per year, or more than 4000 a day. Our use of digital technologies and robotic controls enables us to manufacture components in any batch size without compromising on quality and replicability.

Digital transformation increases efficiency and reduces manufacturing costs

A conventional production line will struggle to achieve these production levels without being of a size that is vulnerable to fluctuations in the order book and will often be working at unplanned over or under capacity. This has serious impacts on quality and drives pricing upwards. The client has to pay for inefficiency. Digital transformation of suspension component manufacturing improves quality, replicability and efficiency, and enables flexible structuring of production processes to minimise downtime.

The digital transformation of every aspect of our auto parts design, manufacturing and shipping processes has streamlined our production facilities and enabled us to reduce setup time for new products, including in-house design and manufacturing of tooling, testing, prototyping and development of improved ODM parts and batch production of flexible orders of many different components on parallel production lines with robotic hot-swapping of tooling jigs.

• Real time component tracking through the production cycle
• Laser etched unique serials for granular component tracking and identification
• Full ACES & PIES catalog compatibility & live tracking of inventory for aftermarket components

Digital transformation has a comprehensive impact across our business, not only has it made our physical machining, forming and welding processes more efficient and improved quality and replicability, it has also given us the capability to track all components at all stages of production through to delivery to our customers with unique laser etched identification.

We have integrated the information management of our ordering systems, inward supply chain, inventory control, production lines, quality testing, packaging, and shipping. This results in real time data at our Smart Factory that gives precise feedback and progress reporting on the status of every component and project that is underway and gives us the ability to rapidly switch from helicopter view to anticipate, identify and resolve emerging potential issues before they can have an impact on our workflow.

Contact us and discover how the digital transformation we have applied to all aspects of our suspension component manufacturing business can also give you leverage to enhance your competitive advantage in the automotive market.