Optimizing the Production Line at Brembo

As a global leader in high-performance braking systems, ensuring the reliable operation of all components under various environmental and mechanical conditions is essential for Brembo. Material or manufacturing failures can be catastrophic, which is especially true for brake calipers, a vital part of the braking system in a car. When you press on the brakes, calipers squeeze the wheel’s rotors, creating the friction that brings your car to a stop. Commonplace in automotive component manufacturing is batch testing, in which parts are sent down the production line and monitored as a unit to ensure they meet quality and performance standards. This is costly because if one piece is found to be defective, the entire batch is deemed so as well and is subsequently discarded. Brembo sought to find a solution to track a single automotive component down the production line, from initial casting to the final product (a brake caliper). As a long-time partner of UC Berkeley, they brought this challenge to the Fung Institute’s Master of Engineering (MEng) students. 

The manufacturing process for automotive components includes several operations under extreme conditions, including casting, long-term heat treatment, surface oxidation, and more. 

It is therefore difficult to apply readable, tamper-proof identification marks that remain intact throughout manufacturing. In collaboration with UC Berkeley Engineering professor Peter Hosemann, who specializes in materials under extreme conditions, Brembo hoped to determine a mechanism to track individual automotive components down the production line that could withstand extreme temperatures, mechanical forces, and surface alterations.

Project Advisor and MEng alumni Amanda Brief remarked that “on the manufacturing line, familiarity can breed assumption,” so Brembo looked to their MEng partnership for “a fresh perspective and way of thinking, using thoughtful consideration to address industrial problems.”

They found that perspective in students Yu-Mao Chu, Arav Desai, Mattias Labostov, and Wayne Toh, all mechanical engineers and class of 2026 graduates of the Master of Engineering program. With concentrations in Product Design, Modeling and Design of Advanced Manufacturing Systems, and Aerospace Engineering, a diversity of perspectives underpinned this team.

Their project began with an extensive literature review of existing marking technologies, including engraving, laser marking, and RFID chips. Wayne Toh points to this as an initial roadblock in their research. “We tried to push it really fast,” he says, referring to their research into proposed solutions. “But that can’t be the case because we [had] to have our foundation down and understand the problem [we were] trying to solve.” He recounted the importance of slowing down to fully conceptualize the problem and goal of each stakeholder, including the team themselves. 

As they delved deeper into their project, the students wanted to create a novel marking solution, while Brembo was interested in systematically removing existing solutions. “It [came] down to balancing our personal goal in the capstone as well as other stakeholders,” Toh said about the success of their year-long research and design project. The team noted the importance of communication, specifically to convey to their advisors why they decided to pursue certain strategies over others. 

“The best experience I gained from this project was coordinating between different stakeholders such as Brembo, our own team, academic professors, and lab staff,” Arav Desai shared.

The team had to balance various time constraints, priorities, and interests, “which is challenging when there are so many different parties with different goals,” Desai added. Despite this, the team was able to incorporate the interests of their stakeholders with their personal goals to improve the manufacturing process.

Through collaboration with professors, lab staff, and Brembo engineers, the team has been able to supply recommendations for industrial optimization within Brembo. They’ve benchmarked a variety of marking strategies and their advantages, limitations, and compatibility with different stages of brake caliper production, from initial casting to final assembly, and presented their two most promising solutions to Brembo. Their advisor notes that the company was fortunate to have these students, as this work is the sort that “[Brembo] engineers don’t typically have the bandwidth to perform [in their] day-to-day.”

Brief added that she and her team “especially appreciated that [the students] understood the connections between [various] workstreams,” and that “having teams that could think across those boundaries has been valuable to [Brembo’s] engineers.”. 

While the MEng students were glad to receive industry experience ahead of their graduation, Brembo was equally grateful to have the students’ thorough conclusions to inform their industrial operations. Uniting various stakeholders, skill sets, and interests, this project serves as a testament of the importance of diversity in all forms to successful innovations.