December 01, 2024

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Hyundai Motor officials check the status of automotive body parts produced through the automaker's automatic press die design system. (Hyundai Motor Group

Korea’s two leading auto brands -- Hyundai Motor Company and Kia -- announced Wednesday that they developed the world’s first automatic press die system for all designs.

Press dies are used to form a vehicle’s body parts such as the trunk, hood and fender. Depending on the part’s design, automakers usually conduct the press dying process three to five times to manufacture a part while press die designers line up numerous requirements for the production of each part.

According to Hyundai Motor and Kia, the automakers standardized the data set for each part’s press die design and designed one system that can automatically press parts to simplify the overall process.

With the optimized system, press die designers can now enter the necessary figures to produce each body part. The automakers said that the new automatic system cuts down the time for press die designing by 75 percent and removes design errors from the beginning to manufacture high-quality products.

The automakers said they secured the technology to cope with unpredictable production circumstances caused by changes in the vehicle’s body parts, manufacturer, production method and production foothold.

Hyundai and Kia began applying the automatic press die design system in 2020 to a limited number of processes. The system has been upgraded so that it can be implemented for the production of new vehicles moving forward.

“The automatic press die design system is a unique system that has been implemented through the data conversion of know-how accumulated for decades,” said an official at Hyundai Motor.

“We will expand the system to various production processes in the future to manufacture high-quality cars and contribute to advancing the technologies of the manufacturing ecosystem.”

By Kan Hyeong-woo (hwkan@heraldcorp.com)