Identification of Technology Integration Challenges at Two Global Automotive OEMs

Platform design has been firmly established in the automotive industry as a strategy to provide wider product variety while maintaining cost effective production. But this strategy can struggle to keep up with the pace and nature of emerging technologies. This paper reviews the existing approaches to modelling product platforms, and showcases the challenges at OEMs introducing new technological innovations in their platforms. A gap is identified in the methods to assess the ability of existing platforms to integrate new technologies whenever they become available

Mallinnus- ja Simulointikäytännöt Ohjausjärjestelmien Ohjelmistokehityksessä

Software development represents a significant portion of the total work effort in control system development, which is why improving the efficiency of the software development process is important. Modeling and simulation tools can be used for design and verification of parts of the control system. Model-based design is a development methodology, that presents models as a central concept in the development process. This thesis explores the opportunities model-based design presents for improving the efficiency of the control system development process. Specifically, the possibility of using automatic production code generation to generate program code representations of design models is of interest. This thesis presents a selection of the tools available for model-based design and explores their capabilities through a design example. The tools presented are Simulink and OpenModelica. The benefits and challenges of model-based design are discussed with regards to the software development process. Tools and methods for achieving the benefits and addressing the challenges are explored. Analysis of the tools concluded that Simulink is suitable for model-based design and enables automatic program code generation. OpenModelica was used for basic modeling and simulation work, but the development environment was not mature enough for production use and the tool lacked production code generation capabilities. Methods for supporting the use of modeling practices in control system development were presesented. A draft of a modeling guidelines collection was created and a template for the hierarchical structure of Simulink models was specified. Methods for implementing traceability and documenting models are also presented. Lastly, the reliability and performance of the Simulink code generator was addressed. Based on existing research, it could be deduced that the code generator was reliable and predictable. In terms of performance, the program code generated by the code generator was found to be comparable to code written by a programmer

Representing Variability in Software Architecture

Software Architecture is a high level description of a software intensive system that enables architects to have a better intellectual control over the complete system. It is also used as a communication vehicle among the various system stakeholders. Variability in software-intensive systems is the ability of a software artefact (e.g., a system, subsystem, or component) to be extended, customised, or configured for deployment in a specific context. Although variability in software architecture is recognised as a challenge in multiple domains, there has been no formal consensus on how variability should be captured or represented. In this research, we addressed the problem of representing variability in software architecture through a three phase approach. First, we examined existing literature using the Systematic Literature Review (SLR) methodology, which helped us identify the gaps and challenges within the current body of knowledge. Equipped with the findings from the SLR, a set of design principles have been formulated that are used to introduce variability management capabilities to an existing Architecture Description Language (ADL). The chosen ADL was developed within our research group (ALI) and to which we have had complete access. Finally, we evaluated the new version of the ADL produced using two distinct case studies: one from the Information Systems domain, an Asset Management System (AMS); and another from the embedded systems domain, a Wheel Brake System (WBS). This thesis presents the main findings from the three phases of the research work, including a comprehensive study of the state-of-the-art; the complete specification of an ADL that is focused on managing variability; and the lessons learnt from the evaluation work of two distinct real-life case studies