Abstract
There is no doubt that the continuously integration of electrics and electronics (EE) in the last three decades is one of the main key drivers for innovation and business success of the Automotive OEMs. On the other side factors like the rising vehicle complexity and the warranty costs for EE issues are increasing the pressure on engineering teams responsible for the mechatronic systems.
The Information Technology (IT) for Engineering has become the main solution to manage all these challenging issues and no engineer could imagine his daily work without the corresponding available software. While IT applications and data standardization for Mechanical Engineering is proven like the unique CAD system availability for an OEM, the IT application standardization for EE Automotive Engineering needs further improvement.
The IT organization of Daimler developed a strategy to sustainably support all EE engineering processes seamlessly. Within this strategy, the mechatronics field was divided in several sub-processes for a better approach.
This EE-IT approach first takes into account that a suitable requirement management is mandatory. Then the strategic IT applications must cover the core sub-processes Mechanics, Electrics and Electronics/Software. It will be shown which core data must be supplied at the interfaces between the different steps in the EE process chain and which requirements are essential for choosing the right IT applications.
For practical commercial vehicle application examples, additional requirements like the impact of commercial vehicle huge variation are shown. For electrical engineering, a deeper view in the IT application strategy is provided. The influence of different IT strategies on worldwide data availability, electrical component supplier integration and global reuse of electrical component or design results between business units are explained as well as expectations on the future development of standards.
Finally an outlook on coming challenges, like the integration of additional components in the EE network, will be given.
KEYWORDS: Engineering IT, Electrics, Electronics, Globalization, complexity management