Ford Motor Co shows off the fruit of its 3-year-old North American virtual build program with the introduction of three sedans spawned from me new CD3 (Mazda6-derived) architecture slated for '06. The vehicles - Ford Fusion, Mercury Milan and Lincoln Zephyr - are Ford's first cars to be completely developed in a Nordi American-based data-driven virtual environment in which manufacturing and product-development engineers collaborate on issues that are not traditionally tackled until late in the product-creation schedule. "Before, the manufacturing engineers couldn't (share plans) with the product-development guys until very late because that was me time when we would start to rebuild die plants," Stefan Judiage, chief engineer-Product & Process Compatibility, says at Ford's virtual build center in Dearborn, MI.
展开▼
