Seamless Integration of Test Information Management and Calibration Data Management in the Overall Automotive Development Process

Abstract

Testing and calibration plays a significant role in the automotive development process. In order to shorten development cycles and to enable the detection of problems at early design phases, OEMs and suppliers are often operating a highly complex testing infrastructure covering all development stages including pure simulation in the office, engine test, drive train test, chassis test, vehicle test on the test bed and road test. A multitude of IT systems from different vendors often complemented by custom in-house solutions is usually required to make testing in such scenarios manageable. Examples are systems for requirement management, test management, calibration management, measurement data management, model management and larger systems for application and product lifecycle management. All these systems increase the productivity within their domain, but an increase of productivity on the macro level can only be achieved when these tool are well integrated to enable seamless collaboration among the different engineering domains and stakeholders. In larger organizations, the cost and time required to integrate the individual IT systems into a seamless system engineering environment is extraordinarily high. The Openness of an IT system with respect to system integration is the cornerstone to reduce this effort. The ARTEMIS CRYSTAL project has recognized this need. With 68 partners and a budget of over 82 million Euro, it has the objective to develop an open Interoperability Specification that enables tools to share and interlink their data in a typical multi-vendor environment. In this presentation we will show how the CRYSTAL Interoperability Specification can be applied in a typical automotive testing and calibration scenario. In particular we will present how systems for Calibration Data Management and Test Information Management can be integrated in the overall automotive development process. We will present details about the technical realization, assess the implementation overhead and show the benefits gained by a better tool integration.