PARTNER CONTENT
This content was produced by Automotive Manufacturing Solutions in partnership with PTC.
As the automotive industry transitions to software-defined vehicles, integrating Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) systems becomes crucial. This integration enhances cross-domain collaboration, accelerates product development, and ensures compliance with safety standards. Experts from PTC and Veoneer share insights on leveraging ALM-PLM integration to maintain competitiveness in this dynamic landscape.
Automotive manufacturing is undergoing some of the most significant changes in recent times. As internal combustion engines are increasingly replaced with electric powertrains and mainly mechanical-centric products are shifting towards software-defined vehicles (SDVs), manufacturers must have robust, flexible solutions to evolve with the industry.
“To manage the growing complexity of SDVs automotive manufactures need to follow a robust product development process based on a model-based systems engineering (MBSE) approach with the goal of designing systems free of unreasonable safety risks, including those from potential cybersecurity threats and vulnerabilities”
- Michele Del Mondo, Senior Director, Global Advisor Automotive, PTC
Implementing appropriate ALM and PLM solutions is essential for automotive manufacturers to remain competitive, compliant and environmentally conscious. Michele Del Mondo, Senior Director - Global Advisor Automotive at PTC says, “there are several reasons, why ALM-PLM integration is becoming increasingly important: shifting from traditional and mainly mechanical featured vehicles to software-defined vehicles comes with a growing complexity in product development forcing the different domains like software, hardware and mechanics to collaborate closer together.
“At the same time, we see, forced through high competition from Chinese carmakers, the need for developing and bringing innovations faster to market than before, with the highest quality and safety requirements.” By integrating ALM and PLM, collaboration between stakeholders can be improved, while the product development process is accelerated and product quality and safety enhanced.
Ensuring safety, compliance and end-to-end digital traceability in product development
With safety implications in mind, Del Mondo says, “to manage the growing complexity of SDVs automotive manufactures need to follow a robust product development process based on a model-based systems engineering (MBSE) approach with the goal of designing systems free of unreasonable safety risks, including those from potential cybersecurity threats and vulnerabilities.”
Alongside managing relevant product data, an essential benefit of ALM-PLM integration is secure end-to-end digital traceability. Full transparency of every stage of the product development process allows teams visibility on forward traceability from the high-level vision through to detailed specification and instantiation in any product. Similarly, backward traceability can be used to track an item back to its originating set of requirements.
“Codebeamer out-of-the-box gives you real time traceability across the V cycle. It’s one of a few commercial products that actually do that. If I want to do the entire lifecycle in one tool, this is the answer”
- Tim Brennan, IT ALM Engineering Manager, Veoneer
Enhancing collaboration and efficiency with digital threads
PTC’s Codebeamer ALM solution can be used independently or integrated with the company’s PLM technology to establish a digital thread spanning the entire product lifecycle. Tim Brennan, IT ALM Engineering Manager at Veoneer, the automotive safety systems specialist, says, “codebeamer out-of-the-box gives you real time traceability across the V cycle. It’s one of a few commercial products that actually do that. If I want to do the entire lifecycle in one tool, this is the answer.”
For a different Tier 1 supplier that provides complete systems like eDrives and steer-by-wire to automotive OEMs, PTC’s solutions have enabled them to implement an MBSE approach. Del Mondo says, “they report that they see an increase in transparency over the product development process as well as improved collaboration between the different domains. Another benefit is the reduced effort to be compliant with ASPICE.”
To keep pace with regulatory changes, consumer demands and error mitigation, greater transparency over the product lifecycle supports teams with efficient change management. “Only through real ALM-PLM integration can automotive manufacturers do a cross-domain impact analysis. If the systems are not connected you need to rely on manual, often paper-based processes which are error prone,” Del Mondo says.
”While ALM-PLM integration can be used to minimise human error and maximise the potential of software beyond human abilities, this full-visibility approach engages individuals to make quality management at each stage of product development everyone’s responsibility”
The future of ALM-PLM integration in Automotive manufacturing
“Considering the complexity of SDVs, specifically the ADAS development, we experience that the complexity of real ADAS system models overwhelms the processing capacity of the human brain. Without a system support of an ALM-PLM integration you can’t make sure that your cross-domain impact analysis really captures all affected artefacts.”
While ALM-PLM integration can be used to minimise human error and maximise the potential of software beyond human abilities, this full-visibility approach engages individuals to make quality management at each stage of product development everyone’s responsibility. Using Codebeamer, teams have the opportunity to integrate automated testing tools to speed test creation and execution. These test cases can be organised with the ability to version-control test assets, building a repeatable quality assurance process.
”AI can help to analyse data relationships between artefacts from ALM and PLM as well as to give guidance on what and how relationships/traces should be created”
- Michele Del Mondo, Senior Director, Global Advisor Automotive, PTC
Considering the potential of ALM-PLM integration over the coming years and the impact of emerging trends, Del Mondo says, “competing with the China-speed to bring innovation faster to market than ever before, and systems becoming more complex and more connected, the importance of an ALM-PLM integration will increase significantly. While nowadays automotive manufacturers are still working in their silos and catching up with the deployment and quality of their software, as soon as this is fixed they will start optimising the cross-domain collaboration and push the ALM-PLM integration.
“Trends like AI will help to solve domain-specific topics as well as cross-domain. AI can help to analyse data relationships between artefacts from ALM and PLM as well as to give guidance on what and how relationships/traces should be created. I strongly believe that optimisations will always start within the specific domain and then extend further cross-domain.”
Find out more by contacting PTC, here.
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