Sandy Munro is an

automotive engineer Automotive engineering, along with aerospace engineering and naval architecture, is a branch of vehicle engineering, incorporating elements of mechanical, electrical, electronic, software, and safety engineering as applied to the design, manufact ...

who specializes in

machine tool A machine tool is a machine for handling or machining metal or other rigid materials, usually by cutting, Boring (manufacturing), boring, grinding (abrasive cutting), grinding, shearing, or other forms of deformations. Machine tools employ some s ...

s and

manufacturing Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of the secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer ...

. He started as a

toolmaker Tool and die makers are highly skilled crafters working in the manufacturing, manufacturing industries. Tool and die makers work primarily in toolroom environments—sometimes literally in one room but more often in an environment with flexible, ...

at the Valiant Machine & Tool company – a

General Motors General Motors Company (GM) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automotive manufacturing company headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, United States. The company is most known for owning and manufacturing f ...

supplier in

Windsor Windsor may refer to: Places *Detroit–Windsor, Michigan-Ontario, USA-Canada, North America; a cross-border metropolitan region Australia New South Wales *Windsor, New South Wales ** Municipality of Windsor, a former local government area Queen ...

. In 1978, he joined the

Ford Motor Company Ford Motor Company (commonly known as Ford) is an American multinational corporation, multinational automobile manufacturer headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan, United States. It was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. T ...

where he improved methods of engine assembly. In 1988, he started his own consultancy, Munro & Associates, in

Troy, Michigan Troy is a city in Oakland County, Michigan, Oakland County in the U.S. state of Michigan. A northern suburb of Metro Detroit, Detroit, Troy is located about north of downtown Detroit. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 87,294, ...

, specializing in lean design, tearing down automotive products to study and suggest improvements and

innovation Innovation is the practical implementation of ideas that result in the introduction of new goods or service (economics), services or improvement in offering goods or services. ISO TC 279 in the standard ISO 56000:2020 defines innovation as "a n ...

s. Now located in

Auburn Hills, Michigan Auburn Hills is a city in Oakland County in the U.S. state of Michigan. A northern suburb of Detroit, Auburn Hills is located about north of downtown Detroit. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 24,360. Auburn Hills is home to ...

, the company performs electric vehicle benchmarking and consults in the aerospace, defense and medical sectors. In 2018, he started broadcasting video analyses and interviews on his

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

channel, Munro Live. The channel has over 425,000 subscribers and raised the profile of his consultancy during the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

, when meetings and trade shows were restricted.

Early life

Munro was born on 19. January 1949 and grew up in

Windsor, Ontario Windsor ( ) is a city in southwestern Ontario, Canada. It is situated on the south bank of the Detroit River directly across from the U.S city of Detroit, Detroit, Michigan. Geographically located within but administratively independent of Esse ...

, Canada. Munro said he first started working by picking tomatoes at age 9. He started his engineering career as a toolmaker at the Valiant Machine & Tool company which mainly supplied

. He then joined

Ford Ford commonly refers to: * Ford Motor Company, an automobile manufacturer founded by Henry Ford * Ford (crossing), a shallow crossing on a river Ford may also refer to: Ford Motor Company * Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company * Ford F ...

in 1978 where he became a manufacturing engineer and coordinator, improving methods of engine assembly. He then started his own consultancy in

in 1988 and now has dual Canadian-US

citizenship Citizenship is a membership and allegiance to a sovereign state. Though citizenship is often conflated with nationality in today's English-speaking world, international law does not usually use the term ''citizenship'' to refer to nationalit ...

Teardown reports

Munro's consultancy specialises in deconstructing automobiles and has analysed the construction of hundreds of vehicles. The detailed analyses are sold to manufacturers and suppliers who use the information to help plan, price and improve their products. For example, they studied the

BMW i3 The BMW i3 is an electric car that was manufactured by German marque BMW from 2013 to 2022. The i3 was BMW's first mass-produced zero-emissions vehicle, zero emissions vehicle and was launched as part of BMW's electric vehicle ''BMW i'' sub-bra ...

in 2015 – an innovative

electric car An electric car or electric vehicle (EV) is a passenger car, passenger automobile that is propelled by an electric motor, electric traction motor, using electrical energy as the primary source of propulsion. The term normally refers to a p ...

which made extensive use of carbon composites and

hemp Hemp, or industrial hemp, is a plant in the botanical class of ''Cannabis sativa'' cultivars grown specifically for industrial and consumable use. It can be used to make a wide range of products. Along with bamboo, hemp is among the fastest ...

. Their detailed cost analysis cost $2.1 million to produce and originally sold for $89,000. The report was 23,793 pages long, divided into the following sections: # Body # Exterior # Rolling

chassis A chassis (, ; plural ''chassis'' from French châssis ) is the load-bearing framework of a manufactured object, which structurally supports the object in its construction and function. An example of a chassis is a vehicle frame, the underpart ...

# Battery system # Electronics # Cooling # Drive and motor #

Range extender A range extender is a fuel-based auxiliary power unit (APU) that extends the range of a battery electric vehicle by driving an electric generator that charges the vehicle's battery. This arrangement is known as a series hybrid drivetrain. The ...

(ReX) # Impact protection and interior

trim Trim or TRIM may refer to: Cutting * Cutting or trimming small pieces off something to remove them ** Book trimming, a stage of the publishing process ** Pruning, trimming as a form of pruning often used on trees Decoration * Trim (sewing), or ...

# Seats In 2020, the report was made available to the public as a sample of their work. Sandy Munro also hoped that this might inspire a future engineer, as he had been impressed when he was an apprentice and a retiring engineer had made the bargain offer of his expensive toolkit for just a "buck a drawer". Other electric cars analysed include the

Chevrolet Bolt The Chevrolet Bolt EV (marketed in Europe as Opel Ampera-eExcept the UK) is a Battery electric vehicle, battery electric Subcompact car, subcompact hatchback manufactured and marketed by General Motors under its Chevrolet brand from late 2016 ...

Jaguar I-Pace The Jaguar I-Pace (stylised as I-PACE) is a battery-electric crossover SUV produced by Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) under their Jaguar marque. The I-Pace was announced in March 2018, European deliveries began in June 2018 and North American deliver ...

Tesla Model 3 The Tesla Model 3 is a Battery electric vehicle, battery electric powered Mid-size car, mid-size sedan with a fastback body style built by Tesla, Inc., introduced in 2017. The vehicle is marketed as being more affordable to more people than pr ...

and

Tesla Model Y The Tesla Model Y is a Battery electric vehicle, battery electric compact crossover SUV produced by Tesla, Inc. since 2020. The vehicle was presented in March 2019 as the company's fifth production model since its inception after the Tesla Road ...

. They initially found that the Tesla cars had innovative and unusual electronics and power engineering but poor bodywork and production design. Munro & Associates consulted on the production design for several electrical vehicles including the Aptera three wheeled autocycle.

Methodologies

Munro advises and consults on the implementation and use of manufacturing methodologies including Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DFMA) and lean design. He introduced DFMA to

Ingersoll Rand Ingersoll Rand Inc. is an American multinational company that provides flow creation and industrial products. The company was formed in February 2020 through the spinoff of the industrial segment of Ingersoll-Randplc (now known as Trane Technol ...

in 1989. Munro's main design principles are: #

Teamwork Teamwork is the collaborative effort of a group to achieve a common goal or to complete a task in an effective and efficient way. Teamwork is seen within the framework of a team, which is a group of interdependent individuals who work toge ...

# Reducing the number of

part Part, parts or PART may refer to: People *Part (surname) *Parts (surname) Arts, entertainment, and media *Part (music), a single strand or melody or harmony of music within a larger ensemble or a polyphonic musical composition *Part (bibliograph ...

s # Layered assembly from above, using

gravity In physics, gravity (), also known as gravitation or a gravitational interaction, is a fundamental interaction, a mutual attraction between all massive particles. On Earth, gravity takes a slightly different meaning: the observed force b ...

# Easy alignment and insertion # Avoid expensive

fastening A fastener (US English) or fastening (UK English) is a hardware device that mechanically joins or affixes two or more objects together. In general, fasteners are used to create non-permanent joints; that is, joints that can be removed or disman ...

# Bulk storage to reduce handling problems #

Poka-yoke is any mechanism in a process that helps an equipment operator to avoid mistakes and defects by preventing, correcting, or drawing attention to human errors as they occur. It is a Japanese term that means "mistake-proofing" or "error prevention", ...

– making operations foolproof to avoid errors #

Self assembly Self-assembly is a process in which a disordered system of pre-existing components forms an organized structure or pattern as a consequence of specific, local interactions among the components themselves, without external direction. When the ...

so that parts naturally engage # Simplify

packaging Packaging is the science, art and technology of enclosing or protecting products for distribution, storage, sale, and use. Packaging also refers to the process of designing, evaluating, and producing packages. Packaging can be described as a coo ...

and servicing # Avoid adjustment and repositioning of the assembly

Munro Live

Sandy Munro gained larger public interest starting in February 2018 with videos containing detailed tear-down and analysis of the then-new

. Munro & Associates then started their own channel, Munro Live, with tear-down and analysis of a variety of mostly electric vehicles and covering related topics around engineering and design methodologies. This channel attracted lots of viewers which raised the profile of the company which was then able to expand its staff and premises despite the lockdowns and restrictions of the

pandemic A pandemic ( ) is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has a sudden increase in cases and spreads across a large region, for instance multiple continents or worldwide, affecting a substantial number of individuals. Widespread endemic (epi ...

. In 2021, Munro recorded and published an interview with

Tesla, Inc. Tesla, Inc. ( or ) is an American multinational automotive and clean energy company. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, it designs, manufactures and sells battery electric vehicles (BEVs), stationary battery energy storage devices from h ...

CEO

Elon Musk Elon Reeve Musk ( ; born June 28, 1971) is a businessman. He is known for his leadership of Tesla, SpaceX, X (formerly Twitter), and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Musk has been considered the wealthiest person in th ...

. They discussed the production of Tesla automobiles, including details such as the use of large

casting Casting is a manufacturing process in which a liquid material is usually poured into a mold, which contains a hollow cavity of the desired shape, and then allowed to solidify. The solidified part is also known as a casting, which is ejected or ...

s in place of assemblies and the in-house design and production of the

seat A seat is a place to sit. The term may encompass additional features, such as back, armrest, head restraint but may also refer to concentrations of power in a wider sense (i.e " seat (legal entity)"). See disambiguation. Types of seat The ...

s. In its first year, this interview received over three million views on

References

External links

*
Munro Live
on Youtube {{DEFAULTSORT:Munro, Sandy 1949 births American automotive businesspeople American automotive engineers Tool and die makers Automotive engineers Canadian transportation businesspeople Electric vehicle organizations Lean manufacturing Living people People from Troy, Michigan People from Windsor, Ontario YouTubers from Michigan YouTubers from Ontario