Lighting under Pressure?
Leveraging Tensions Between Design, Marketing, and Engineering
This study focuses on the automaker perspective of the vehicle creation process and, provides the opportunity to better understand its intricacies, including:
- The roles and responsibilities of the automaker’s design, marketing, and lighting-engineering that often seem opaque to outside observers. This insider information makes it more transparent by providing insight from places and spaces usually off-limits to outsiders, and so stands to facilitate mutual understanding amongst automakers and tier-1 and -2 suppliers;
- How to educate new managers, engineers, account managers, and project leaders for a better understanding of the vehicle creation process, to raise motivation and avoid frustration and prepare for the stormy times of a vehicle launch program;
- How to improve the capability to anticipate the complexity created by new influences and changed priorities in the automaker’s process;
- How to transform from passive observer to active participant, early in the car creation phase, by leveraging the detailed behind-the-scenes information provided in the booklet.
A group of senior experts in the field of car lighting—Carsten Befelein, Geoff Draper, Hector Fratty, Wolfgang Huhn, Leo Metzemaekers, Jean Paul Ravier, and Ralf Schäfer—have analysed how a new vehicle model is created and the roles of the different personnel, especially with respect to creating the lighting system.
Not unexpectedly, during the discussions it became obvious that a variety of tensions exist among the three key functions of design, marketing, and lighting engineering.
As with past DVN Studies, one element of information gathering was through interviews with a number of key stakeholders from design, marketing and lighting engineering, mainly within automakers.
The study starts by describing the main demands of the three key functions, including the influence of the homologation process. The study concludes by outlining the upcoming tensions, and unavoidable target conflicts, during the development of a vehicle and how to deal with them in a constructive manner.
The DVN Study 2021 shines light on these tensions with real-world examples, such as the role of lighting engineering in its relations to marketing, design, and regulation.
Main chapters
Business opportinities
Design demands and trends
• Mission of design expressed by designers
• Megatrends influencing design and styling
• Design: styling demands for lighting
• Design trends and demands expressed from DVN designers’ interviews
• Future styling trends and demands
• Takeaways from design demands
Marketing demands and trends
• On the importance of marketing
• The roles of marketing during the vehicle creation and lifecycle
• Automaker brand value and signature
• Marketing trends and demands expressed from DVN designers’ interviews
• Takeaways from marketing demands
Lighting engineering demands and trends
• Introduction to the role of engineering and its main relationships
• Relation, tension, conflicts with design
• Relation, tension, conflicts with marketing
• Value drivers for lighting engineering
• Takeaways from engineering demands
Regulatory and safety demands
• Homologation and regulation
• Tensions in the programme for the launch of a new vehicle model range
• The UNECE or EU exemption procedures
• Fundamental requirements to enable a new lighting function to be regulated
• How to avoid delays to the introduction of new functions
• Conclusion
Leveraging tensions
• Some aspects of the vehicle design process
• Reasons for pressure on the designers
• Reasons for pressure on marketing
• Reasons for pressure on engineering
• The role of the program director
• The others are not enemies
• The right organisation
• The role of DVN
