Why and How to Balance Alignment and Diversity of Requirements Engineering Practices in Automotive

In large-scale automotive companies, various requirements engineering (RE) practices are used across teams. RE practices manifest in Requirements Information Models (RIM) that define what concepts and information should be captured for requirements. Collaboration of practitioners from different parts of an organization is required to define a suitable RIM that balances support for diverse practices in individual teams with the alignment needed for a shared view and team support on system level. There exists no guidance for this challenging task. This paper presents a mixed methods study to examine the role of RIMs in balancing alignment and diversity of RE practices in four automotive companies. Our analysis is based on data from systems engineering tools, 11 semi-structured interviews, and a survey to validate findings and suggestions. We found that balancing alignment and diversity of RE practices is important to consider when defining RIMs. We further investigated enablers for this balance and actions that practitioners take to achieve it. From these factors, we derived and evaluated recommendations for managing RIMs in practice that take into account the lifecycle of requirements and allow for diverse practices across sub-disciplines in early development, while enforcing alignment of requirements that are close to release.Comment: 19 page

Early timing analysis based on scenario requirements and platform models

Distributed, software-intensive systems (e.g., in the automotive sector) must fulfill communication requirements under hard real-time constraints. The requirements have to be documented and validated carefully using a systematic requirements engineering (RE) approach, for example, by applying scenario-based requirements notations. The resources of the execution platforms and their properties (e.g., CPU frequency or bus throughput) induce effects on the timing behavior, which may lead to violations of the real-time requirements. Nowadays, the platform properties and their induced timing effects are verified against the real-time requirements by means of timing analysis techniques mostly implemented in commercial-off-the-shelf tools. However, such timing analyses are conducted in late development phases since they rely on artifacts produced during these phases (e.g., the platform-specific code). In order to enable early timing analyses already during RE, we extend a scenario-based requirements notation with allocation means to platform models and define operational semantics for the purpose of simulation-based, platform-aware timing analyses. We illustrate and evaluate the approach with an automotive software-intensive system

TRIZ theory and automotive safety systems development

Engineering design tasks involve a wide range of theories and methods. Most of the existing engineering practices aim at mapping given requirements and demands into a list of specifications describing a feasible product. Nevertheless, formal design theories are only available at later design phases, which are performed after a feasible design concept has been proposed and verified. The bottleneck of new product development projects usually lies in the generation of initial feasible concepts. Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ), originated in Russia, was developed to address this issue of generating the initial concepts. In this thesis, we analyze the development and evolution of automotive safety systems with TRIZ. Our objective is two-fold. First, we demonstrate that TRIZ can be successfully applied to the process of automotive safety system development, which has never been done before. TRIZ tools such as Contradiction Table and Su-field problem formulation are used for this purpose. Secondly, we use TRIZ as a technical forecasting tool in predicating the future trend of automotive safety system development. This task is conducted through patent search and S-curves. With S-curve, it helps us to identify the current development stage of a certain automotive safety system and where the new direction is heading into.Dept. of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses & Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis2004 .W368. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 44-01, page: 0511. Thesis (M.A.Sc.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 2005

SysML for embedded automotive systems: SysCARS methodology

International audienceThis paper gives an overview of the years of Valeo experience in deploying a Model Based System Engineering (MBSE) approach for mechatronic automotive embedded systems and products. The different stages are described initial studies, language and tool benchmarking up to the last returns of experience on industrial projects. Particular emphasis is put on describing the SysCARS methodology which gives, not only a precise mapping of System Engineering work items to SysML artefacts, but also the sequence of modeling activities to be performed. It is shown how the SySCARS methodology has been implemented as a SysML profile, based on a powerful "workflow driven" mechanism, which helps the user during the modeling process. Finally it is presented how interoperability is ensured with the tools already in place for requirements management and control design

Development of the Integrated Model of the Automotive Product Quality Assessment

Issues on building an integrated model of the automotive product quality assessment are studied herein basing on widely applicable methods and models of the quality assessment. A conceptual model of the automotive product quality system meeting customer requirements has been developed. Typical characteristics of modern industrial production are an increase in the production dynamism that determines the product properties; a continuous increase in the volume of information required for decision-making, an increased role of knowledge and high technologies implementing absolutely new scientific and technical ideas. To solve the problem of increasing the automotive product quality, a conceptual structural and hierarchical model is offered to ensure its quality as a closed system with feedback between the regulatory, manufacturing, and information modules, responsible for formation of the product quality at all stages of its life cycle. The three module model of the system of the industrial product quality assurance is considered to be universal and to give the opportunity to explore processes of any complexity while solving theoretical and practical problems of the quality assessment and prediction for products for various purposes, including automotive

Co-Simulation Methods for Holistic Vehicle Design: A Comparison

Vehicle development involves the design and integration of subsystems of different domains to meet performance, efficiency, and emissions targets set during the initial developmental stages. Before a physical prototype of a vehicle or vehicle powertrain is tested, engineers build and test virtual prototypes of the design(s) on multiple stages throughout the development cycle. In addition, controllers and physical prototypes of subsystems are tested under simulated signals before a physical prototype of the vehicle is available. Different departments within an automotive company tend to use different modelling and simulation tools specific to the needs of their specific engineering discipline. While this makes sense considering the development of the said system, subsystem, or component, modern holistic vehicle engineering requires the constituent parts to operate in synergy with one-another in order to ensure vehicle-level optimal performance. Due to the above, integrated simulation of the models developed in different environments is necessary. While a large volume of existing co-simulation related publications aimed towards engineering software developers, user-oriented publications on the characteristics of integration methods are very limited. This paper reviews the current trends in model integration methods applied within the automotive industry. The reviewed model integration methods are evaluated and compared with respect to an array of criteria such as required workflow, software requirements, numerical results, and simulation speed by means of setting up and carrying out simulations on a set of different model integration case studies. The results of this evaluation constitute a comparative analysis of the suitability of each integration method for different automotive design applications. This comparison is aimed towards the end-users of simulation tools, who in the process of setting up a holistic high-level vehicle model, may have to select the most suitable among an array of available model integration techniques, given the application and the set of selection criteria

Meja kopi modular untuk rumah minimalis moden

Peningkatan populasi di seluruh dunia adalah sangat tinggi. Di Malaysia, kadar pertumbuhan populasi rakyat Malaysia meningkat kepada 1.1% iaitu sebanyak 32.4 bilion (2018) berbanding 31.1 bilion (2015) (Mahidin, 2019). Peningkatan populasi ini meningkatkan permintaan dan bekalan terhadap keperluan asasi seperti makanan, pakaian, peluang pekerjaan dan juga ruang kediaman. Ini turut mempengaruhi reka bentuk dan saiz kediaman bagi menempatkan kesemua rakyat Malaysia dan juga pekerja asing yang berkerja di negara ini. Menurut Harian Metro Online, tanah yang semakin berkurangan menyebabkan unit kediaman sekarang banyak dibina dengan keluasan yang terhad antara 650 hingga 800 kaki persegi (Satibi, 2018). Justeru, pemilihan perabot memainkan peranan penting dalam usaha untuk menampakkan kediaman lebih luas dan selesa (Ismail, 2020)

Using Neural Networks by Modelling Semi-Active Shock Absorber

A permanently increasing number of on-board automotive control systems requires new approaches to their digital mapping that improves functionality in terms of adaptability and robustness as well as enables their easier on-line software update. As it can be concluded from many recent studies, various methods applying neural networks (NN) can be good candidates for relevant digital twin (DT) tools in automotive control system design, for example, for controller parameterization and condition monitoring. However, the NN-based DT has strong requirements to an adequate amount of data to be used in training and design. In this regard, the paper presents an approach, which demonstrates how the regression tasks can be efficiently handled by the modeling of a semi-active shock absorber within the DT framework. The approach is based on the adaptation of time series augmentation techniques to the stationary data that increases the variance of the latter. Such a solution gives a background to elaborate further data engineering methods for the data preparation of sophisticated databases