A Digitally Integrated Planning Framework for Automotive Product Development and Pre-Series Management

Automotive development increasingly requires close coordination between engineering, manufacturing, quality and logistics, particularly during the pre-series phase, where product maturity, process readiness and organizational capability must converge before the Start of Production. Existing development frameworks describe in detail what activities should occur and when, but offer little guidance on how planning information should move across the organizational and digital boundaries separating the functions responsible for executing it. This gap is especially significant for a high-performance, low-volume manufacturer such as Automobili Lamborghini, which combines adherence to Volkswagen Group process standards with production volumes several orders of magnitude below those of the Group's high-volume brands. This thesis addresses that gap by developing and applying a digitally integrated planning framework, implemented on the cplace platform, on a live vehicle programme at Automobili Lamborghini. The framework rests on five principles: decomposition of the development process by functional area, reunification of the decomposed steps into a single master plan, distributed ownership of planning status, real-time propagation from a single authoritative source, and direct linkage between planning data and governance decisions. The production process is represented through reference stations carrying programmed lead times, and cross-functional information needs are served through a subscription mechanism that exposes the states other functions require without transferring the underlying data. The framework was applied to the Temerario programme, covering the body, paint and assembly sequences. Its effect was evaluated through a baseline analysis of the previous planning method, a quantitative assessment of the coordination effort involved, and semi-structured interviews with the practitioners responsible for the phase. The evaluation indicates that the framework reduces the time between a deviation occurring and its becoming visible to dependent functions from several days to the same day, converting recurring status meetings into occasions for decision-making rather than reporting. The thesis contributes an extension of the digital thread concept from product and engineering data to planning decisions, and demonstrates that the integration problem in automotive planning can be addressed without introducing new systems, by imposing a coherent planning logic on the systems an organization already operates.