Modularization and evaluation of vehicle’s electrical system

Sammanfattning: Modularization is a strategy used by many companies, to help them provide their customers with a high variety of customized products efficiently. This is done through the customization of different independent modules, which are connected by standardized interfaces that are shared throughoutthe entire module variety. Scania, being one of the large companies that provide modular products, has been successfully improving their modularization concepts for many years, and is one of the most iconic companies when it comes to modularization of buses, trucks and engines. But with the increasing need ofelectronics integrated in the vehicles, it is becoming more and more important to modularize the electrical system. There is currently an existing, modularized, product architecture for the electrical system, and Scania wants to know how well modularized it is, as there is no unified way that indicates what is considered to be the better solution.To analyze the current state of the electrical system, a systematic method of modularization was used, which would help answer three important questions: Are the modules well defined? Is there a way to systematically compare alternative solutions? What criteria are more important to focus on? Since there is no unified way of modularization, many modularization methods have been created, and each one has been optimized for a certain purpose. This project compares three different modularization methods and then uses one of the methods which is deemed to be the preferred method to help provide the answers that the company seeks when investigating the modularity of the electrical system. As the electrical system is very complex, and the project has limited amount of resources, it was decided to choose one of the control units as an example, which was the APS (air processing system). The literature study showed that the most rewarding method to use was the MFD (Module Function Deployment), as it provides more information about the product and what criteria the company should focus on. It was then decided to use the relevant steps in MFD to analyze the state of the APS as an example of how this method works.