ISG Provider Lens™ Manufacturing Industry Services - Product Engineering - Automotive Autonomous, Connected, Electric and Shared (ACES) - U.S. 2022

Product engineering is the center of engineering and R&D services

Product Engineering – ACES

Extending PLM continuum for software developers: With vehicles becoming more software oriented, from being hardware oriented, and digital thread use gaining traction in R&D, enterprises can benefit from using a single source of data. Thus, a product lifecycle management (PLM) solution should be clearly explained to software developers by mechanical and electrical engineers. Accordingly, stakeholders in the U.S. are exploring options for driving the value proposition through the convergence of PLM, service lifecycle management (SLM) and application lifecycle management (ALM) in smart manufacturing in North America.

Enabling traditional organizations to be on par with new technology themes: As most of the traditional players in the U.S. have framed a separate organization within their enterprises to address the new-age autonomous, connected, electric and shared (ACES) automotive requirements, service providers have been helping them reinforce the underlying technology with the mix of differentiated user experience (UX), maturity of vehicle autonomy, energy density of the battery and more. Some of the common themes across these sub-organizations are that they are transforming the vehicle cockpit experience, leveraging smart manufacturing by completely redoing the vehicle engineering platform from the intelligent connected vehicle (ICV) and EV to plug-in hybrid vehicle aspects.

Vehicle OS development requirements: OEMs and tier 1 companies are investing extensively in building selfdriving capabilities. Service providers are supporting them with capabilities around development, test platforms and toolchain-oriented services such as continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) for self-drive technologies. Several OEMs are trying to build their vehicle operating systems by leveraging containers and reengineering the architecture to make it flexible to frequent software upgrades that are required on a regular basis. This has created a requirement for OS development and support capabilities.

Spanning the layers that eventually connect the automotive components to cloud: Several service providers that have been intrinsically involved in the body domain, clusters, heads-up displays and advanced driver assistant systems (ADAS) components have extended their expertise to developing the electronic control unit (ECU) software, along with its verification and validation, thereby reflecting capabilities around conventional and model-based development. Furthermore, capabilities in embedded software layers, real-time operating systems (RTOS), silicon customization, connectivity software, human-machine interface (HMI) frameworks, middleware and application software are in high demand. This has influenced industry participants to focus on meeting the evolving and matured industry segment needs, helping OEMs and tier 1 companies renew their strategies across supply chains and manufacturing. This necessitates a relook and a modern way of engineering product design and manufacturing, which can be achieved by developing a robust engineering practice.

V2X security through dedicated short-range communications (DSRC): Improving vehicle connectivity with 5G and securing the vehicular ad-hoc network (VANET) has been one of the priorities of the automotive industry. The research efforts, together with some educational institutes, have been directed toward preventing cybercriminals from forging the user ID and executing a denial-of-service attack. Moreover, industry participants tend to leverage their knowledge assets (such as Industry 4.0 maturity assessment frameworks, autonomous platforms and product cost optimization platforms) that have been developed over a period of time in-house and with partners to develop outof- the-box solutions for OEM clients.

Common collaboration platform development for EV stakeholders to monetize the available data: Service providers and system integrators have been working proactively on the EV ecosystem, especially on the V2X front. Engagements around developing a common collaboration platform for several stakeholders, such as OEMs, drivers and utility companies, are on the rise.

Product Engineering – Semiconductor and Hi-Tech

Fresh investments in chipmaking: In the post-COVID-19 era, organizations are facing acute challenges with geopolitical issues that have disrupted the Chinese supply chain. As the China-Taiwan issue grows as a geopolitical challenge, stretching beyond each country’s borders, TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, would need fabs from locations other than Taiwan. Organizations have realized that depending on a single regional supply chain can create serious challenges. Accordingly, companies in the U.S., such as Intel, are working on three-nanometer (nm) fabs that would reduce their dependency on China. Manufacturers that have end-to-end products linked tightly with supply chains involving China are considering alternatives to meet demand and continue production, even by compromising on cost, if needed. One example is the adoption of the ST microchip, despite it being expensive.

Impact of geopolitical issues on the chipmaking industry: OEMs are looking for partners to redesign their products with available components and avoiding suppliers that are impacted by geopolitical issues. Tools such as SiliconExpert play a significant role in this. With more than two billion parts in its database, the software provides supply chain information by the part number. This information includes details on the manufacturer, manufacturing location and sourcing of the raw material, along with actionable insights on product obsolescence, product life and other parameters. This information is critical to engineers looking for alternative suppliers.

Impacts of chip shortage on different industries: While the automotive and healthcare industries are still struggling to cope with the global chip shortage, the situation in the consumer appliances and electronics sectors has improved. A few medical device companies are opting for bulk purchases in lieu of product redesign. As a result of the lack of availability of lean or just-in-time inventory, these companies are placing orders for field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) for the next two to three years and putting this on the balance sheet. This demand matches the scalability required by chip manufacturers for profitable production.

The automotive segment, on the other hand, does not portray a promising scenario after the setback due to the pandemic, despite consistent demand. While the supply of microcontrollers is manageable, most of the chips are still 52 weeks out. These chips play a crucial role for L3 and L4 functions (semi-autonomous driving), such as adaptive cruise control, which requires considerable processing due to sensor fusion. OEMs have been delivering cars without these functionalities for the last few months, with the option of a retrofit once chips are available. However, several OEMs have reported a significant delivery backlog due to the component shortage.

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