From Bolts to Bytes – How to Organize for Increased Software Focus in Automotive Development

Authors

Dipl. Wirt.-Ing. Ulf König, Hans Beck, MSc, Felix Sperber, MSc, Strategy Engineers GmbH & Co KG, Munich

Summary

The automotive industry has realized that innovation is increasingly driven by software functionality. All of today’s key trends such as shared mobility, autonomous driving, electrification of powertrains and increased connectivity require substantial software content to be realized on the road. At the same time, even basic vehicle functions such as opening, closing and locking of doors become electrified and electronically controlled. In short, all aspects of software development – from specification and requirement setting, concept and serial development, purchase from suppliers, integration, testing and deployment as well as maintenance in the field – have become mission critical for automotive companies.

OEMs and suppliers have not failed to acknowledge this in their presentations and speeches. However, this has left little imprint on their organizations. As organizational charts are ideally a representation of the way-of-working within a company, it appears that most OEMs and suppliers are still firmly stuck in a component-focused way-ofworking, with an engineering department structured along the dimensions of body, chassis, interior, powertrain, and electrical. Software is usually integrated at the lower levels of the organization.

Some OEMs and suppliers have realized this contradiction and embarked on a transformation to represent software in their organizations at a higher level. This is a fundamental change in perspective, challenging some of the most established paradigms of
automotive development. In the last years, we have supported some automotive players in their transformation and will share our lessons learned and best practices in this presentation.

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