Power quality issues and solutions in the automotive industry

With just-in-time production schemes, today´s automotive manufacturers stretch flexible-automation and supply-chain management to the limit. Unscheduled downtime at the main assembly plant or at the outsourced supplier´s facility can lead to lower productivity and lost profits. When a plant recently experienced four-cycle voltage sag, over $700,000 was lost in the following 72 minutes due to the shutdown of the process and required rework. With a myriad of robotics, programmable controllers and drive systems working in a real-time process environment, automotive manufacturing systems can be vulnerable to power quality issues. This paper explores areas of vulnerability from the body shop through the paint shop and final assembly and identify effective measures to increase the robustness of automotive process systems through this new premium service concept U.S. utilities such as TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) along with Duke energy have joined EPRTs power quality in automotive research project This project promotes the concepts of solving power quality problems at the most economical level through empowering the end user with knowledge to solve power quality issues.