Software technology in an automotive company - major challenges

The automotive industry is one of the sectors which has been affected significantly by the industrial software revolution during the last few years. Competitive challenges, which are of major relevance for the growing number of software-based automotive innovations, are presented by a dramatic growth in system complexity, rising time and cost pressure, and high quality demands. All these requirements lead to a number of software-related challenges which will be of significant competitive importance for the automotive industry in the future. Asides from the question of whether an automotive company decides to develop software in-house or whether this is carried out by suppliers, every automotive key player has to hold or to build up specific software competencies. The most important competence areas are the software development process, software quality management including supplier cooperation, the overall architecture of the in-vehicle software, as well as the ability to specify, to integrate and to test the system.