ARMONK, N.Y. & STUTTGART, Germany – IBM and Robert Bosch GmbH have announced a collaborative partnership to create a new, data-driven model to more efficiently and accurately develop intelligent, interconnected automotive products.
Built on open standards and IBM design tools, the continuous engineering software platform can quickly scale to thousands of partners, clients, engineers and technicians, the two companies say. By engaging all relevant stakeholders in the automotive supply chain and elevating the right data from them, the standards-based platform will be the cornerstone Bosch’s long-term vision for cross-industry collaboration to quickly deliver increasingly smarter and safer vehicles. Driven by innovation in consumer electronics technology, the automotive sector is under immense evolutionary pressure. Today’s vehicles are more connected than ever – containing as many as 100 computerized controllers and 10 million lines of software code. As vehicle complexity continues to rise, automotive suppliers must address pressures to reduce costs and to innovate quickly, while also managing the intense challenge of ensuring vehicle quality.
Bosch says it recognized this need for standards-based integration between all engineering teams and organizations in the supply chain. Additionally, an emerging generation of software engineers is increasingly demanding more transparent communication, flexibility and collaboration across the industry. By unlocking core engineering processes across teams and development partners, the IBM platform enables Bosch to achieve a key of efficient engineering by establishing a strategic, transparent reuse approach.
“Our aim is greater agility, accelerating product innovation and delivery," said Dirk Hoheisel, board member at Robert Bosch GmbH. “By implementing a software and systems design platform founded on integration and reuse, we’re able to improve our integration and increase development quality – setting higher safety and quality standards not only for our company, but for the industry as a whole.”
The IBM solution was selected for its ability to easily scale and become adopted by multiple disciplines and organizations across the company. Through this advantage, Bosch is able to execute its long-term initiative of a standards-based platform for end-to-end efficiency and strategic reuse of engineering artifacts. As a result, the company will easily meet safety and maturity standards such as ISO26262, ASPICE, AUTOSAR and others as they continue to evolve.
"Strategic reuse and the ability to unlock engineering knowledge are core components of what IBM has coined ‘Continuous Engineering’," said Kristof Kloeckner, general manager of IBM Rational Software. "Through process advisory and automation, our design and development tools allow our automotive clients, such as Robert Bosch GmbH, to streamline product creation and eliminate deployment hurdles – enabling them to be more competitive and agile by focusing on innovation. By building our platforms on open standards, our clients can subsequently scale such tools broadly and rapidly, establishing a standard and common thread to work as one global team.”
Bosch’s engineering platform is founded upon continuous engineering principles and built on IBM’s technology for systems and software engineering. This includes IBM rational solutions covering requirement, design and quality management, collaboration and engineering lifecycle management.
