How To Improve Wire Harness Quality ?

                                                                How to improve wire harness quality ?

In order to make connected cars and autonomous driving possible, high-quality wiring harnesses are essential. As quality assurance is a complex and mainly manual manufacturing process, using a dedicated Manufacturing Execution System (MES) is crucial.

The core element of vehicle IT is the wiring harness. It acts as a backbone that connects digital components to each other or to other components such as the engine or chassis, and provides power to various devices.

 

Wiring harnesses have become critical to vehicle efficiency and safety. Malfunctions like stereo system failures can be annoying, but even with driver assistance system failures, careful drivers can still compensate

However, as autonomous driving cars become mainstream, faults will no longer be tolerable, whether they occur in a single component or in the harness that connects them together. Similarly, quality requirements will sharply increase in this regard. Broken wires or loose connections in the wiring harness system could mean life or death. Therefore, all systems connected through wiring harnesses must adopt a redundant design.

Not long ago, the wiring harnesses for specific vehicle models were the same for all vehicles produced for that model. Each harness contained all the wires for all possible options, regardless of whether the option was ordered with the vehicle or not. Some car manufacturers still produce harnesses in this way. Other car manufacturers design and manufacture harnesses that only include the wires necessary for the specific options ordered with the vehicle. The reason for this effort is twofold: on the one hand, the interior space of the car is limited, so unnecessary wiring must be avoided as much as possible; on the other hand, the weight of the wires themselves. Nowadays, automotive wiring harnesses are not only long, but also quite heavy, with 50 to 60 kg (110 to 132 lbs) being quite common. To reduce fuel consumption and harmful emissions by reducing weight, more customized harness systems are being developed for each specific vehicle.

Production of automotive wiring harnesses is very labor-intensive, with manual labor accounting for 95% of the cost. This is why manufacturers seek manufacturing bases in countries with low labor costs. To do this, a large number of new employees must be hired and trained, which in turn affects efficiency and quality. Therefore, fault prevention is a key factor in manufacturing, as is full traceability for isolating faults in recall events.