By John Yurtin
The United States Consortium for Automotive Research (USCAR) was established in 1992 to strengthen the U.S. automotive industry through precompetitive research. The USCAR is made up of Ford, General Motors and DaimlerChrysler employees working together in various consortia. One area that is being worked on is electrical components, such as connectors and terminals, by the Electrical Wiring Components Applications Partnership (EWCAP).
I recently hosted a roundtable discussion with the USCAR/EWCAP management team at their monthly coordination meeting. Participants included Mike Cwiek with DaimlerChrysler, Tim Donovan with Ford and Bob Nadzan with GM. Also participating in the discussion were the Director of USCAR, Bob Culver, and EWCAP team members and other representatives. As a previous member of the EWCAP team, I was aware of some of the issues the USCAR is dealing with and I initiated discussion on those issues. The following is a result of that discussion.
EWCAP Mission and Goals
The EWCAP mission is to permit and encourage cooperative research and development including the joint sharing of technologies and resources to develop common electrical connection systems. The main goals of the consortia are:
- To develop common designs for electrical connectors to reduce costs and product complexity, while improving reliability, quality and serviceability
- To establish common families of best-in-class connection systems
- To establish a standard footprint for electrical components common to all partners
- To develop industry-wide test specifications and design guidelines for electrical components
"Our plan is to create a catalog of common connector footprints and specifications. This would enable us to more readily share components, reduce cost and enable faster time-to-market. The suppliers should also benefit since, once an interface is agreed upon, they would have to validate and test only once in order to be certified by all three of the member corporations. The overall savings potential is tremendous," said Tim Donovan.
The EWCAP team is the only USCAR consortia with full-time participation of six connection system experts representing the three original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Located close to their respective organizations, the EWCAP team members have the flexibility to share technical information necessary to develop common specifications. The team uses the major suppliers to assist in the development and it is not unusual to attend USCAR meetings where competitive suppliers are sitting together and contributing to the common good. "The kind of detail work involved in properly designing a connector interface requires that we meet regularly. We have to fully concentrate on the task, and being co-located really helps. Outside distractions don't become an issue," Donovan continued.
Projects and Activities
To better understand some of the projects, I will use the example of the cigar lighter connection. Prior to the USCAR, GM, Ford and Chrysler were using a number of different connectors to mate to cigar lighters. Of course, the cigar lighter connection does not influence a customer's choice of vehicles, so the EWCAP team worked with connector suppliers and the cigar lighter suppliers to develop a common connection. During the development, they also agreed on a common performance requirement, which resulted in improvements to the cigar lighter itself.
This one project gave the companies more flexibility in supply and an improved product and cost, and it gave the suppliers an opportunity to supply across OEMs with a single approval. Other common connections include trailer tow connections, oil pressure senders, horns, antilock brake system (ABS) modules, headlamps, fuel injectors, under-hood lamps and knock and crank sensor connections, as well as common footprints for 0.64, 1.5 and 2.8 mm blade systems.
The EWCAP Specifications
The specifications developed by the EWCAP team assure the performance of the connection systems. "Although we create common connection designs and performance documents, we don't want to be recognized as a 'standards' organization," said Bob Culver. For this reason, EWCAP documents have been published and supplied through the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) and they have SAE/ USCAR notations. The member corporations also have their own internal documentation and refer to the SAE/USCAR documents for consistency.
Some of the documents available include:
- SAE/USCAR-2: Performance Standard for Automotive Electrical Connector Systems
- SAE/USCAR-3: Standard for Testing Automotive Miniature Bulbs
- SAE/USCAR-4: Standard for Cigar Lighters and Power Outlets
- SAE/USCAR-12: Design Guidelines for Automotive Electrical Connector Systems
- SAE/USCAR-13: Standard for In-tank Electric Fuel Pumps
Coordination with Organizations
Along with the support of the SAE, the EWCAP team enlists the support of the International Standards Organization (ISO) and other standards organizations. Hot items they support include the Automotive Multimedia Interface Collaboration (AMIC) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 42 Volt Consortium.
Organizations like the SAE, ISO and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) have been in business for a long time and the USCAR relies heavily on their resources. These organizations do a great job but are limited in their ability to create and enforce standards. "There is a difference between what we are doing and the other organizations. Most standards organizations like SAE have participants from all types of business — suppliers, users, manufacturers, even individuals," said Bob Nadzan. The companies these people work for often cannot justify their people spending a lot of time on these activities. In the SAE for instance, participants do not really represent their respective companies, but act as individual experts. Meetings are often held only twice a year and there is not a strong commitment from the OEMs to meet the specifications. The EWCAP team works full time on these issues and has the full support of their parent companies.
The OEM Position
All three parent corporations are endorsing the EWCAP requirements within their own specifications. "Some parts of our organizations are ahead of others, but eventually we plan to fully embrace the USCAR standards. We are saying firmly that one of our requirements is that connections must meet USCAR," said Donovan. "There are a lot of existing devices that use older connections and we hope to find that those connections also meet the USCAR requirements," added Nadzan.
"At DaimlerChrysler US, there are two main choices with our connector strategy: USCAR or YESC (Yazaki is Chrysler's major wiring supplier). Any deviation from that requires a special sanction," said Mike Cwiek. "The mixing of cultures in today's global business is no different for EWCAP than it is for the other parts of our companies. In some cases, we're not sure what the final outcome will be. However, we have had some good examples of sharing ideas and expect to have more. We've found that by continuing to question one another, we can understand the motivation behind each other's diverse requirements and then propose a compromise."
There are some design strategies that have nationalistic histories and often need to be resolved. "Right now our counterparts in Stuttgart favor tanged terminals, while we prefer plastic locks with secondary support. But, we are working through that issue," Cwiek continued.
The GM, Ford and DaimlerChrysler team members sit and work together daily and need to know where to draw the line in sharing of information. Some issues like costs are considered "out of bounds," and are not discussed. Cost-effective features of a design may be shared. This is the same cooperation expected of the participating suppliers.
"Our companies compete on marketing, style and features, not connectors. We've found lots of common ground without getting close to these issues. Connectors aren't a customer differentiator. The car buyer really doesn't care about connectors and doesn't want to. Our competitive position as a U.S. industry is enhanced when we improve reliability and cut costs, which is our main goal," said Donovan.
Benefits to OEMs
"This is a high-level abstraction, but what we ultimately want to see is higher quality, lower piece cost and zero tooling," said Cwiek. Having a common set of standards has already proven to be an asset. The playing field is being leveled so that the OEMs can share several components. In the past, each company required unique electrical interfaces and electrical tests. Since they now have a common best practice, they have eliminated a great deal of the redundant testing and validation. "We have proven that this concept works and now we need to expand it," said Donovan.
"We got into a couple of situations where the supplier has informed us that their connection is approved by Ford or Chrysler, and based on that data, we approved the part. This eliminated the need for duplicate testing," said Nadzan.
The USCAR/EWCAP has become the voice of the parent companies on connection system related matters. The OEMs expect new products to:
- Conform to the SAE/ USCAR-2: Performance Standard
- Conform to the standard footprints on the Web site (www.uscar.org)
- Conform to SAE/ USCAR-12: Design Guidelines
The work at the USCAR has been a gradual process, but suppliers are recognizing the USCAR initiative. "There are suppliers out there with very good ideas, and I don't think necessarily that they have to go to each company with those ideas. They can come here to USCAR and cover all three manufacturers at one time," said Nadzan. "I personally don't care about which connections we use except that they need to fit my manufacturing process," he added.
Conclusion
Having worked with the EWCAP team for a couple of years, I believe its efforts are paying off. The OEMs are already seeing the benefits of the common connections, the suppliers know exactly what the customers expect and the consumers benefit with better technology. The other global car manufacturers are also showing strong interest in conforming to USCAR standards and the standards organizations are benefiting from the participation of full-time connection experts from the USCAR. It seems to be a win-win situation for all involved, which results in elevating the level of connection systems in the industry.
JOHN YURTIN, a Connector Specifier Advisory Board Member, is a Staff Product Specialist, Delphi Automotive Systems, 4944 Belmont Ave., Youngstown, OH 44505; (330) 759-6118; Fax: (330) 759-6195; E-mail: john.yurtin@delphiauto.com.
