The Problem

In general mechatronic systems have to cope with a variety of applications, imposing different duty cycles and boundary conditions. The low vertical integration of several industries requires different suppliers to contribute to product development. Thus, an OEM has to co-ordinate various activities from several parties during the verification process. A large number of interacting simulation and testing activities have to be supervised and synchronised.

The Challenge

Planning of design verification requires several hundreds of activities to be co-ordinated among in-house departments and external partners. The rising complexity of software control algorithms makes a co-development of hardware and software necessary. Despite frequent un-foreseen events during testing, efficient co-operation must be assured for final target achievement. Problem solving – the core activity of development – requires ad-hoc access to event histories with corresponding data, results, decisions and documents. Part release and similar formal decisions at quality gates have to be documented.

The Solution

Uptime Engineering helps customers to establish a transparent process design. The software Uptime PROVE™ is used as the platform for planning and management of all design verification tasks and targets, including

• A requirement analysis resulting in the list of verification targets
• The corresponding plan of tasks, including simulations and tests
• Integration of problem solving tasks like failure analysis or re-design
• Storage of results from tests and measurements
• Reporting and ad-hoc analytics

Uptime PROVE™ is used for lean documentation of events and decisions along the verification process. Reporting functionality supplies on-line status information and ad-hoc analytics to inform about problem solving and decision making.

The Commercial Impact

Information retrieval, in particular from various sources, typically absorbs a significant amount of engineering capacity – the limited resource in several industries. The automatisation of reporting and analytic tasks reduces 10 – 20% of the engineering staff time. The permanent on-line availability of all project related results for the project team brings the product quality to top level. Moreover, the establishment of a reference for planning and problem solving raises the verification process quality.