Winning in Automotive with PTC's Engineering Solutions

HT Syndication
New Delhi [India], December 5: The automotive industry is experiencing turbulent times. Ongoing global developments demand speed to market more than ever before, and to keep up, engineers must now master systematic vehicle variant management of both hardware and software platforms. US industrial software provider, PTC, has the solutions to manage these challenges.
Today's vehicles contain around 150 million lines of software code. The dramatic increase in software-based functions has made traditional software lifecycle management obsolete. Previously isolated development processes now require a sophisticated approach. PTC offers the integrated solutions automotive manufacturers need.
Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) not only optimizes software management, but also integrates with hardware development processes and platform strategies. In the automotive industry, ALM is a step towards a strategy that synchronises software and hardware development.
ALM focuses on the entire lifecycle of software applications, from conception to support, ensuring efficiency and quality through integrated workflows, version controls and continuous integration; whereas traditional Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) focuses on physical products. PLM provides a central platform for managing product-related data, optimises product development and shortens time-to-market. Today, both ALM and PLM solutions are needed.

The integration of ALM and PLM poses specific challenges, especially in aligning the different innovation cycles of software and hardware. While software is often updated in short cycles, hardware development takes much longer. This discrepancy requires planning and flexible platform strategies to harmonise both cycles. In addition, ALM and PLM generate large amounts of data that need to be stored in different systems. Successful integration requires interfaces that enable data exchange and ensure that data is current and consistent.
Furthermore, the traceability of requirements, code changes and tests is crucial. In an environment in which software and hardware are closely interlinked, traceability is important to reduce errors and ensure high quality.
PTC's ALM platform includes market-leading Codebeamer and the Product Line Engineering (PLE) enablement software pure::variants for product and software variant management.
pure::variants ensures the platforming and modularization of the software as well as the management of the configuration, while the software development process, testing and requirements management are simultaneously managed and implemented by Codebeamer. This means that the holistic solution accelerates both software and hardware development. The platform also supports agile and collaborative development, while ensuring absolute data security. The solution fits seamlessly into existing process chains and uses similarities between products to optimise and automate the entire reuse process. This allows innovative technologies to reach market maturity within weeks instead of months or years.
PLE enables the systematic development and management of product variants by optimising the reuse of components and processes across multiple product lines. In the automotive industry, this means that entire product lines can be developed more efficiently and consistently, reducing development effort and time-to-market. PLE supports agile development approaches and helps to manage the complexity of modern vehicle development. Continuous updates incorporate new functions into future vehicles, reduce maintenance, and ensure smooth operation between components. Variant management helps to synchronise the innovation cycles of software and hardware and increases the efficiency of the development process.

Product platforms, consisting of software and hardware, benefit from a comprehensive reuse strategy. The reuse of software artifacts helps to shorten development times and reduce costs. This requires a flexible infrastructure into which functions can be quickly integrated. Just one example is over-the-air updates, which continuously update the software without physical intervention.
The decoupling of software and hardware enables faster development of new functions, but the synchronisation of innovation cycles remains a challenge. ALM provides a framework to support this process. Manufacturers should focus on an integrated system architecture that enables full traceability and agile, cross-discipline development.
With PTC's integrated solution portfolio, automakers can keep pace profitably. The outcome is a more productive and successful engineering organisation that can deliver compelling vehicles at a faster pace and lower cost.
BMW, Geely, Hyundai, Mazda and Volkswagen, among numerous others, are currently using PTC's ALM platform. They have moved into the new era of software-driven innovations. We call that winning.
Links for Ref: https://www.ptc.com/en
Link to the Soft Driven Vehicle Whitepaper: https://ptc001.sitecorecontenthub.cloud/api/public/content/cb3729fdbbce4c21a1ce02dd0211e20b?v=4cde626f
To find out more, please contact us:
PTC
Vinod Palakkil
Vpalakkil@ptc.com
Rajkiran
Rchakkola@ptc.com
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