GM Buying Into Tesco Measurement Cell

By Tom Murphy
- WardsAuto.com, Mar 23, 2006 12:53 PM

AUBURN HILLS, MI – No one involved in a vehicle program benefits when it flops in the marketplace.

Nobody, that is, except perhaps tooling suppliers that win new business when an auto maker decides an emergency redesign is necessary.

One tooling supplier, Tesco Measurement Solutions, is in the unique position of helping auto makers reduce tooling costs with a new technology that eliminates the hard fixtures that have been used for decades to check the dimensional accuracy of parts produced with that tooling.

A division of Japan’s Hirotec Worldwide, Tesco has supplied flexible body-in-white (BIW) assembly manufacturing tooling since 1989. Tesco produces hemming presses and hemming dies for closure panels (doors, hoods and decklids).

In 2003, at the urging of General Motors Corp., Tesco joined with CogniTens Inc., a company founded in Israel in 1995 that specializes in 3D non-contact measurement equipment. Until that time, Tesco had been producing traditional coordinate measuring machines.

Together, Tesco and CogniTens began developing a measurement system specifically tuned to the needs of automotive BIW assemblies.

The result is the I3 Measurement Cell, which uses CogniTens’ OptiCell 3D non-contact measuring technology in cell configurations that Tesco says are “100% compatible with OEM plant requirements.” I3 stands for Industrialized Image Information.

Tesco I3 measurement cell gathers dimensional data on body panel. Tesco says it designed the cells to reduce auto makers’ cost for developing, proving out and monitoring expensive product-specific tooling.

The I3 system is new to the market and is winning significant buy-in from General Motors, which has purchased eight cells since July 2005, says Gary Krus, vice president-measuring systems at Tesco.

As of mid-March, Tesco was assembling a ninth cell for GM, and a 10th was to be delivered to the No.1 auto maker later this year.

As GM warms to the I3 system, it has abandoned the use of hard checking fixtures altogether for certain vehicle programs.

Krus says GM used extensively the I3 approach to evaluate fit and finish for the interior and exterior of the Pontiac Solstice roadster and the all-new Chevrolet Tahoe SUV, which is the first vehicle to launch from the massive new GMT900 fullsize truck platform.

The fully automated I3 equipment typically is used for problem solving during launch, as a vehicle program is ramping up to high volume.

In addition, GM is using Tesco equipment at die shops to test certain dies. Once the equipment confirms the die is doing its job correctly – based on imported computer-aided design (CAD) data for the panel being evaluated – GM approves payment to the die shop.

When the dies are moved to their “home” vehicle assembly plant, the measurement cell moves to the plant as well, where it is used for part sampling, Krus says.
Checking fixtures are common in stamping and vehicle assembly plants. Costing up to $200,000 apiece, a checking fixture is like a large picture frame, custom crafted with precision to hold a closure panel after it has been stamped and hemmed.

Once the panel has been mounted in the fixture, a quality-control staffer takes dozens of measurements to ensure the panel will fit properly when it is installed on the vehicle assembly line. Every vehicle’s hood, door and decklid has its own checking fixture.

This manual system is not a panacea, however. Sometimes, costly fit-and-finish problems are not detected until late in a program.