Choices Must Be Made: Fadel at DVN Shanghai
In the second keynote of the DVN Shanghai Workshop, Kamislav Fadel, former R&D manager of AL and Hella, presented his view on where the massive technology disruption in vehicle lighting could lead us, depending on the choices we make. We are living in a very dynamic market where the technology evolution is playing a major role. But what triggers the technology evolution, which other levers acts and what are the impacts? These are vital questions that are facing us.
Among the many triggers that induce radical technology evolutions, the performance, functionality, style, and EV/AV proliferation play major roles. It is important to mention important aspects like slimmer lighting functions, digitalisation, and the EV/AV revolution. Those aspects will require new technologies and will disrupt the car front architecture. The consequences for lighting technology are tremendous, and bring multiple parallel complex developments. One direct impact is that no market player can develop all the required technologies. Choices must be made!
Another strong impact is increased complexity, which manifests through increased part counts and development interfaces, system dependencies and production area requirements, logistics of complex part handling—just to mention a few; there are many more. On the other hand, the market creates additional challenges via increasing car model counts, increasing option variants, and the phase lift strategy.
These levers are new, and they are already impacting the development, the production, the value chain and the business. These mutations will be even more acute in the next 5 to 10 years.
The shift from device development towards complex systems development will provoke reorganisations and will challenge the development community in terms of way of working, knowledge creation, sharing and management. The search for vital efficiency to contain development cost increases will be a daily challenge.
The part count explosion will challenge the production footprint. More production area is needed to preproduce and assemble the components of the Full-LED headlamp; the CAPEX needs will increase dramatically, and it will foster new business models, partnerships, and collaborations. Tier-1s will more assemble than preproduce, while tier-2s will need more product visibility to develop the right products. The value chain will be then adjusted to be able to cope with this complexity.
In total the major aspect of the business will be challenged. The good news is that the top line will steadily increase and will create a lot of opportunities. The challenge is to secure the bottom line with all the increasing product and business risks.
And now: where do you stand in this complex new reality?