Word: modularity
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...scene of most of the carnage, it no longer officially exists. Workmen gutted the area and then sealed the entryway with a wall and two rows of blue lockers. For the moment, until parents and school officials decide what to do, books and tables have been moved into four modular rooms alongside the school...
...company does best and then focusing energy on that activity. For the Smart Car, Mercedes made sure it kept the engine design to itself, while the chassis is that of a Mercedes A-class sedan. The car's styling comes largely from SMH Automotive, the Swiss company that uses modular design to make Longines and Swatch watches (Smart, in fact, stands for Swatch-Mercedes art). SMH owned 19% of MCC until Daimler-Benz bought its stake in MCC before merging with Chrysler in October. "Basically, you could say the Smart's design, engine and chassis platform were all done...
...grabs. Volvo and Renault supply each other with engines for some models, and the high-performance British motorcar company Lotus says 10% of new cars made in Europe will carry engines of Lotus design next year. Lotus spokesman Alastair Florance says the company's new modular V-8 motor can be dismantled, reconfigured, expanded or contracted to fit virtually any car. Lotus, which is owned by Malaysian carmaker Proton, earned more money advising other carmakers last year than it did selling its own legendary road burners...
...what do car assemblers actually make these days? "Car assemblers have cornered the market on chassis platforms, and no modular provider wants to start making those, at least not in Europe," says Jurgen Kruschwitz, head of SMH Automotive. "Outside engineering consultants like Lotus may play a larger part in certain functional situations, but the car companies know how to protect their own design and competence...
...slouch at sequencing either. In Saarlouis, Germany, Ford representatives show off a 3,000-foot-long ski-lift contraption that feeds 58,000 sequenced components daily into the company's assembly flow, replacing 3 million miles' worth of truck travel over the course of the year. The modular scheme will enable the company to offer the same diversity of car models on just 16 different chassis by next year, down from 32 platforms in 1998, as part of an overall plan to trim yearly costs $1 billion worldwide...