Today most innovations made within the automotive domain are driven by electronics. The automotive customers demand new functionality with every new product release and the time-to-market is constantly shortened. Automotive embedded systems are often resource constrained and trade-offs between the system behavior and the resources required is of great importance. The cost sensitive automotive industry has to optimize the use of the system's limited resources, but in the meantime also be flexible. The system needs to support a large number of vehicle configurations over many years of production. The design decisions are usually based on many factors that pull in different directions such as maintenance, portability, usability etc. The growing complexity of the product and the many uncertain factors create a need for support in the design process. To better understand this problem decision methods used within an R&D department of an international vehicle manufacturer has been investigated through interviews and surveys. The survey reveals that a majority of the respondents use unstructured methods for resolving decision issues. When respondents were asked about their preferences there was an expressed need for more structured methods. In this research several existing methods have been surveyed and the methods most relevant to this issue are further described in this thesis. The main contribution of this thesis is an evaluation method using Real Options. The method provides the opportunity to analyze the cost of designing for flexibility to cope with a future growth of the product, based on the estimated value of the future functionality. To improve the usability an evaluation process is defined to aid engineers. This process provides a way of valuing system designs and enables the engineer to think about the future in a systematic manor. To analyze the resource usage within an embedded system a method is proposed on how to evaluate the resource efficiency of functions implemented within an automotive embedded system. The challenge of this work has been to develop methods that are found helpful to the industry and are easy enough to use so that designers are willing to try them again
Software intensive systems are an increasing part of new products, which make the business impact significant. This is especially true for the automotive industry where a very large part of new innovations are realized through the use of software. The architecture of the software intensive system will enable value creation when working properly or, in the worst case, prevent value creation.
Lean thinking is about focusing on the increase of customer value and on the people who add value. This thesis investigates how system architecting is performed in industry and how it can be improved by the use of Lean thinking. The architecting process does not create immediate value to the end customer, but rather create the architecture on which value in terms of product features and functionality can be developed. A Lean tool used to improve the value creation within a process is Value Stream Mapping (VSM). We present a method based on VSM which is adapted to enable analysis of the architecting process in order to identify improvements.
A study of architecting at two companies shows what effect differences such as a strong line organization or a strong project organization has on the architecting process. It also shows what consequence technical choices and business strategy have on the architecting process. In order to improve the understanding of how architecting is performed a study including architects at six different internationally well-known companies have been interviewed. The study presents the practices that are found most successful. The context of the different companies as well as the architecting practices are compared and analyzed.
The early design decisions made when developing software-intensive systems are crucial to the outcome of development projects. In order to improve the decision making process a method was developed based on Real Options. The method improves the customer focus of critical design decision by taking the value of flexibility into account.
This thesis provides a toolbox of knowledge on how Lean thinking can be applied to system architecting and also presents how architecting is performed in industry today.
The goal of this study is to improve the understanding of how architecting is performed within the field of software-intensive systems. Architects at six different internationally well-known companies have been interviewed to understand their way of working. This paper presents the practices that are found most successful. The context of the different companies as well as the architecting practices are compared and analyzed. Many of the architecting practices found in the study can be explained by the context of the different companies. The study shows that architects at all companies mention a general lack of understanding of software-intensive systems within industries that used to be mechanical. The architects' view of their work is very similar independently of where they work. Also the way architecting is performed is very similar, but surprisingly only one company has a defined process for architecting.
This paper studies the current state of architecting practices in three different industrial segments which are characterized by being software-intensive. The context of the six different companies as well as the architecting practices are compared and analyzed. The methods used to solve the tasks within the architecting process are mapped to the context where it has been used in industry. An analysis of the case study indicates how different methods are more suitable in different environments. Many of the successful practices found in the study can be explained by external factors related to the context of the different companies. Others relate to the internal structure of the organization, including its maturity which is measured by assessment through an adaption of the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI).
The automotive customers demand new functionality with every new product release and the time-to-market is
constantly shortened. The automotive embedded systems are characterized by being mechatronic system which adds
complexity. The systems are often resource constrained and trade-offs between the system behavior and the resources required is of great importance. The decisions are usually based on many factors that pull in different directions such as maintenance, portability, usability etc. The complex system and the many uncertain factors create a need for support in the design process. In this paper the use of Real Options is evaluated on a hypothetic but realistic case taken from the automotive industry. The case show how real option valuation provides additional guidance when making system design decisions. Real Options provide the opportunity to analyze the cost of designing for future growth of an platform, based on the estimated value of the future functionality. The value of a flexible design can thereby be quantified making the trade-off between short and long term solution more accurate.
Embedded automotive architectures and software need to support a large number of vehicle product lines over many years of production. This leads to a complexity and many uncertain factors when developing such systems and a need for support in the design process. An evaluation method using Real Options provides the opportunity to analyze the cost of designing for flexibility to cope with a future growth of a product line, based on the estimated value of the future functionality. In this paper Real Options is applied on a case within the automotive industry. To improve the usability an evaluation process is defined to aid engineers. This process provides a way of valuing system designs and enables the engineer to think about the future in a systematic manor. The value of a flexible design can thereby be quantified and the proposed process shows how it can be accepted by practitioners.
This chapter discusses how to deal with scenarios as previous presented by putting a value on flexibility in the system solution. Thereby, it becomes clearer when to focus on short-term solutions and when to keep the long-term evolution of a product line in mind. The approach taken is to evaluate flexibility using a concept called Real Options. The method is motivated and described by using as an example an industrial area where very complex product lines occur, namely automotive embedded systems. To improve the usability of the method, a structured evaluation process is defined to aid practitioners such as developers and architects. The evaluation process provides a way of valuing system designs and enables the practitioner to think about the future in a systematic manner. The value of a flexible design can thereby be quantified, and the proposed process shows how it can be accepted by practitioners within the automotive industry.
In many industries, complex embedded product lines are designed. In theory, this follows a structured and well-organized process, where a set of given requirements is transformed step by step into an optimal product. However, in reality the complexity of the products and markets often lead to much less stringent ways of working. Let us consider a fictional, but not atypical, scenario.
The impact of embedded systems within the automotive industry has grown very rapidly and is today influencing most part of the product development process. This technological change puts high demands on the development process in order for the company to stay competitive. The architecting process is performed during the early phases of the development process when uncertainty is very high. The architecting process will not create immediate value to the end customer, but rather create the architecture on which value in terms of product features can be developed. The architecture will enable value creation when working properly or, in the worst case, prevent value creation. Lean is a product development philosophy that aims at creating value for the end customer. A Lean tool used to improve the value creation within a process is Value Stream Mapping (VSM). VSM has in this work been adapted and evaluated to analyze and identify improvements of the architecting process within embedded systems development. In this paper we present practical experiences from using this adapted VSM. The evaluation was conducted through interviews at two automotive manufacturers. VSM is shown to be a valuable tool to identify waste and thereby improve the architecting process.
The automotive customers demand new functionality with every new product release and the time-to-market is constantly shortened. The automotive embedded systems are characterized by being mechatronic systems which adds complexity. The systems are often resource constrained and trade-offs between the system behaviour and the resources required is of great importance. The system complexity and the many uncertain factors create a need for support in the design process. Many design features such as memory and processor capacity can be seen as options, i.e. giving you the right but not the obligation to use them in the future. The valuation method using Real Options provides the opportunity to analyze the cost of designing for future growth of a platform, based on the estimated value of the future functionality.
In this paper the use of Real Options is applied on a real case within the automotive industry. The studied company develops commercial vehicles for a broad range of applications. In this case study a valuation is performed on two different design alternatives of function allocation. The design alternatives vary in hardware, software, cabling etc. The case study has been per-formed together with the developing organization and it has therefore been possible to observe the acceptance of the method. The study shows how Real Option valuation provides valuable guidance when making system design decisions and more importantly also show how it can be used and accepted by system engineers. The method does not only provide a way of valuing sys-tem designs, but it also forces the system engineer to think about the future in a systematic manor. The value of a flexible design can thereby be quantified making the trade-off between short and long term solutions more accurate.
The growth rate of R&D activities in automotive industry brings an increased need for transfer of design knowledge. This, in combination with growing complexity of the product puts new demands on the decision process. In this paper, decision methods used within the R&D department of an international vehicle manufacturer has been investigated through interviews and surveys. The main focus has been to identify and analyze methods used by the individual roles within different development teams. The survey reveals that a majority of the respondents use unstructured methods for resolving decision issues. When respondents were asked about their preferences there was an expressed need for more structured methods.
This article discusses the resource utilization of embedded systems in the automotive industry. Traditionally, the major cost driver - or resource input - has been regarded as the hardware cost. Issues such as software development costs and maintenance costs have historically been neglected. In order to address this, the article embraces the more comprehensive view on resources that a resource can be regarded as anything which could be thought of as a strength or weakness of a given firm. In this article the major drivers of resource consumption are identified. The work has also included several interviews with employees in order to find empirical data of the embedded systems in vehicles. This paper proposes a method to evaluate the resource efficiency of user functions implemented through the embeddedsystem. By the use of Data Envelopment Analysis - which has proven to be a useful method - the resource utilization of six user functions is evaluated. Future work of particular interest would be to perform a more extensive case study.