OPTIMISED DESIGN SOLUTION FOR FLOOR CONSOLE AND SIMILAR COMPONENTS

Traditionally floor console design requires structural part inside the assembly to mount surrounding parts to withstand various load cases and functionality. this leads to heavy assembly weight & greater number of parts in assembly. This will also impact on overall cost of the component as well as assembly cycle time, logistics & maintenance cost. In order to address this issue for any floor console or similar component which requires structural part inside for rigidity we thought of redesigning our parts and use of CPSF injection molded parts without impacting aesthetics. Counter pressure structural foam (CPSF) process allows us to design in more structural and thicker parts while still it gives good class a quality. CPSF process is similar to IM process only, but here along with thermoplastic materials in pelletized form and blowing agent is also added in hopper in proper ratio. Components similar like floor console requires more strengthen parts for holding loads & occupant sitting load. With CPSF design components we are able to achieve all durability requirement without any Sheetmetal structure inside the assembly which will give us more strength as well as less wight of the components. With this Design & process we can able to reduce overall weight of the component more than 40% & part cost around 25 to 30%. Also we could achieve reduction in end item to plant from 4 to 2 which will save tac time by minimum 14 sec. this also helps the reducing the number of parts at supplier end & F&F requirement, part handling cost, tooling handling cost, assembly cost, storage space at supplier end which in turn helps us in getting better part price for lower annual volume assemblies.