Abstract
The world car program, when successfully planned and executed, will bring about efficiency in engineering, product development and manufacturing. The result of such efficiency will help to achieve a very high degree of the product commonality, vehicle component sharing and lowering of product cost from economies of scale. In this paper, a brief review is presented on the recent world car activities by the major auto makers, a consideration for the world car strategy and product plan, and the effect of different safety rules on world car design and parts proliferation problems. Also reviewed are various constraints in worldwide coordination of materials and components, and some strategies for global sourcing and meeting local contents requirements to maximize product commonalty and component sharing.