Innovation in the auto industry increasingly involves software and electronics. "The standard estimate is that 60 percent of vehicle innovation is now software and electronics, but we tend to believe it is even higher than that," says Patrick Milligan, Ford's senior manager for vehicle solutions.

Ford's Sync feature is an optional, in-car communications and entertainment system that gives drivers hands-free, voice-activated control over their mobile phones and digital music players.

The growing prevalence of software and electronics in cars has huge implications for OEMs. One application involves controlling warranty costs. According to Chris Davey, technical leader of software and control systems engineering at Ford, "The rapid expansion in the software complexity in our vehicles was creating a problem with our dealerships when it came time to replace or repair electronic control units (ECUs) that had a software glitch. The traditional approach was a standard hardware replacement where we would actually remove the ECU from the customer's vehicle and replace it with a new unit."

That approach is not a cost-effective solution. What's "worse is that in the process of removing and replacing an ECU, you might introduce some squeak and rattle type issues into the customer's vehicle, which is absolutely not desirable." And with features like Sync needing to keep up with advances in communications and entertainment technology, it would be cost-prohibitive to replace a piece of hardware each time a software update is needed.

"The growing amount of software and electronics also brings with it the need to manage a product with a much shorter lifecycle. Now we need the ability to manage consumer electronics lifecycles, which turn over in six to nine months, alongside the traditional automotive lifecycle of two to three years," Davey said.

Another implication is that the volume of software needed for each car is growing rapidly. Ford's 2005 models contain between 2 million and 3 million lines of code. Current vehicles have an average of 6 million lines of code. Ford expects about 10 million lines of code in its 2010 model vehicles. In looking at the development costs for all this software (which is mainly written by outside suppliers), the company has made it a priority to increase the amount of reused code.

Integrating and then validating this software, which comes from all three supplier tiers, is another issue. "While the suppliers do some level of component validation, we have to bring that software together and ensure we've got the compatibility up front and then drive it to completeness," Milligan said. This is complicated by another current trend: the growing interdependency in vehicle electronics systems.

"Ten or 15 years ago, you would typically have a power train control module, maybe a transmission control module and perhaps a brake control module," Davey said. "Since then, we've seen the rapid introduction of distributed functionality where multiple modules are communicating with each other across a network." An example is adaptive cruise control, in which brake and throttle control modules must interact. "Today, on some of the high-end vehicles, there are 50 to 70 modules on the network and dependencies involving probably 60 to 70 percent of those modules," Davey added. When software for one module is updated, the OEM must be able to understand the impact of that change on the other modules.

New approach to managing software development

These issues required Ford to come up with a new way of testing, validating and managing the software content in its vehicles. "This has been a key deliverable affecting future quality as well as the future cost of our products," Milligan said. Ford is an In-Vehicle Software (IVS) program based on the "Teamcenter" digital lifecycle management solution from Siemens PLM Software. The auto maker already had a large PLM implementation for managing its mechanical development efforts.

"Another key reason we built IVS on the Teamcenter platform was to ensure a scalable solution that we can use globally," said Martin Baker, Ford's global manager for software and tools. Ford brands in North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Australia are using the IVS system.