@conference {2426, title = {2426. Automotive Weight Organization for the 21st Century}, booktitle = {57th Annual Conference, Wichita, Kansas, May 18-20}, year = {1998}, month = {5/18/98}, pages = {26}, publisher = {Society of Allied Weight Engineers, Inc.}, organization = {Society of Allied Weight Engineers, Inc.}, type = {31.0. WEIGHT ENGINEERING - SURFACE TRANSPORTATION}, address = {Wichita, Kansas}, abstract = {Providing weight engineering support to diverse product line groups and their independent leaders, while insuring that Corporate requirements for assessment of weight performance and implementation of weight reduction technologies are met, is a difficult task in any industry. In the auto industry it is complicated by little historical evidence of continuing interest or realization of the benefits to the product of reduced weight. This appears to be true for many engineering areas, but there are signs the culture is changing. The recent heightened public and governmental interest in global warming has led the auto companies to coin Environmental Strategies which include a quantum increase in fuel economy with the weight engineering discipline to play a major role. One auto company{\textquoteright}s effort to design a Weight Engineering organization to address the twin challenges of being a service engineering organization and a corporate staff activity charged with ""making lighter vehicles happen"" is described in this paper. This is a description of a ""point in time."" The Weight Engineering organization is continuing to evolve to meet its corporate missions in both individual vehicle lines and in total.}, keywords = {31. Weight Engineering - Surface Transportation}, url = {https://www.sawe.org/papers/2426/buy}, author = {Akey, C D} }