DIGITAL REALITY – DIGITAL TWINS
CONNECTED DEVELOPMENT PROCESS VEHICLE IN-USE PHASE
1 9
development speed and methodology
N O . 2 2 0 2 0
For more than seven decades AVL has been creating products and solutions
for every aspect of powertrain development. From combustion sensors
to emission measurement systems, NVH solutions, thermal management
and beyond. A broad product portfolio of tools which address every
inch of the vehicle and every individual development phase, backed up with
the know-how of a global network of highly skilled experts.
The conventional vehicle as we know it has been developed over more than
a hundred years. But as new, highly complex electrified powertrain configurations
and autonomous driving technologies represent the future of mobility,
OEMs don’t have the next century to bring mature products to market.
The answer to these challenges is not simply individual tools, solutions and
areas of expertise. Instead it’s about bringing all of these things together to
realize a revolutionary new vision of what the development process should
look like. And that’s exactly what we’re doing at AVL.
A HOLISTIC, ECOSYSTEM APPROACH
Typical vehicle development involves different teams working on individual
domains and parts of the vehicle. One team might be working on thermal
management for example, another on NVH characteristic design, and
another on the transmission system.
While all of these teams and disciplines work towards a shared goal of the
complete vehicle, they also have individual goals to meet. And it’s not until
systems and components are integrated – on the testbed or in costly prototypes
– that the cross influences can be thoroughly investigated, and synergies
understood.
This conventional approach is expensive, time consuming, and results in
unwanted development loops. And in this period of automotive transformation
and growing vehicle system complexity, where efficiencies must be
found in every part of the development process, it is becoming increasingly
impractical to develop vehicles this way.
And so, at AVL we have brought our years of expertise, our tools and
methodologies together in a single, unified approach, that revolutionizes
the way we approach vehicle development.
Using digitalization, simulated digital twins and an end-to-end development
philosophy that extends to the in-use phase, we are helping OEMs and
Tier1 suppliers break out of this siloed thinking. Our approach allows
teams to easily share their work and progression, right across the project.
Furthermore, it utilizes the power of data intelligence to share goals and drive
optimization all the while significantly reducing the need for prototypes.
This diminishes time to market, saves money and accelerates innovation.
CONNECTED TOOLS AND LAYERS
By harnessing our cross-domain know-how and our Open and Integrated
Development Platform (IODP), the development ecosystem allows the
rapid realization of project goals on both micro and macro levels. This ecosystem
approach can be used to create new development workflows, or to
augment existing architectures. It is organized into three layers: the development
process, development activities and an interoperability layer. In accordance
with this, AVL provides services and tools that match this ecosystem.
The first layer, Process Innovation Services, is designed to optimize each step
of the process, from product planning to functional design and component
testing, right through to mass production and customer use.
The second layer, Domain Products and Solutions, provides tools for
specific domains / applications. It covers virtualization, lab management,
in-vehicle testing, the in-use phase and ADAS system
development.
The final layer is the Connecting Solutions layer. This allows
the best use and sharing of data from all activities across the
development process - independent of tools or suppliers.
It includes our IODP solutions, Model.CONNECT™,
Testbed.CONNECT™, Device.CONNECT™
and Data.CONNECT™.
These layers allow every domain, every process and every
activity to be conducted with the bigger picture in mind.
And, crucially, given the vast amounts of testing that are
currently required for ADAS and autonomous systems, it
extends into the in-use phase. This allows real world usage
data from the latest connected vehicles to inform the development
of the next vehicles coming off the production line.
To explore the AVL development ecosystem approach in
greater detail, over the next few issues Focus magazine
will be highlighting different aspects of this revolutionary
approach. In this issue, we begin with a detailed look
at Virtualization.