Western Digital: "Agile development" is crucial for automakers

Stefan Mandl, Vice President of Sales, China and Asia Pacific, Western Digital

In recent years, many Silicon Valley experts have predicted that the development of digital technology will completely disrupt the automotive industry, and the entire industry will face huge changes. But by aggressively responding and investing in the development of new technologies, automakers have largely transformed.

Today, this strategy has achieved obvious success.

The demand for cars equipped with advanced features is growing rapidly. Autonomous driving and electric vehicles are gaining momentum. It is no exaggeration to say that modern cars are often compared to "data centers on wheels." Western Digital estimates that more software code may be used in today's cars than in fighter jets.

These development trends have pushed the automotive industry into a key node of transformation.

To ensure that consumer demand for more advanced vehicles continues to be met, and that more and more AI technologies are being applied to automotive systems, the automotive industry must adopt innovative technologies and systems in design and actual manufacturing, especially in electronics.

In 2019, Allied Market Research pointed out that the global connected car market reached $63.03 billion that year. This figure is expected to exceed $225 billion by 2027.

As a result, the automotive industry needs to accelerate the deployment of "agile development" to respond to current industry trends.

Transformation is imminent

The agile development process began 20 years ago as a set of values and practical theories for software development. The core principles of agile development include a large number of product iterations, continuous communication between developers and users, continuous evaluation of progress, and responding to changing needs.

Agile development not only helps to improve the efficiency of software development, but has also been successfully used in other industries, and automakers can learn from this theory to improve product testing and design. This will help automakers get the parts they need faster and bring advanced technology-equipped cars to market faster.

Agile development eliminates complexity and inefficiencies in the manufacturing process, speeding up development and saving costs.

The biggest advantage that agile development can bring, as the name suggests, allows manufacturers to withstand the upheavals of the market – "agile" like a Formula One race car, rather than a bulky eighteen-wheeled wagon.

Data storage analyst Tom Coughlin wrote in a recently released white paper that companies that have more skills in agile development and are ahead of the competition can gain a competitive advantage. Coughlin points out some of these reasons, including:

· Manufacturers with agile development will use components that are more consistent with mainstream semiconductor products.

· By running more processes at the same time, automakers become more efficient.

· Increased production speed can reduce costs and increase profits.

Automotive development is still slow

Software and semiconductors are at the heart of cutting-edge technologies in the automotive sector, including connected cars and vehicle-to-vehicle collaboration, autonomous driving, and memory and storage capabilities that support them, and improving the way these components are developed is critical.

Coughlin noted in the white paper that memory integrated circuits (ICs) and sensors will be one of the top seven automotive semiconductor products with annual usage of more than 1 billion pieces.

But for now, the automotive industry still needs to accelerate its ability to develop chips and software.

In a McKinsey report last year, analysts said: "As the market changes, automakers that lack software capabilities will face greater challenges, including delayed production and budget overruns." ”

Agile development is imperative

One of the characteristics of agile development is the simultaneous execution of several important development tasks. This is in stark contrast to other processes that perform testing, etc. after product development is complete.

The above approach is too slow for agile development. Because agile development requires every member of the team to collaborate on testing for most of the entire development cycle.

Agile development also facilitates the collection of feedback from all stakeholders, including users. This creates a feedback closed loop at multiple stages of the development process to ensure that the team designs the product that the customer wants. An important part of this is setting up feedback loops across multiple development phases to ensure that what the team is building is tailored to the customer's needs.

At the same time, this enables developers to identify problems at an early stage and anticipate how advances in semiconductor, sensor, and data storage technologies can improve product performance.

A solid feedback mechanism is the link between the car manufacturer and the supplier of electronic components, ensuring that both sides are in step.

Chips, artificial intelligence, and digital twins

Recently, automakers have begun to try to forge closer ties with semiconductor suppliers. In November 2021, Ford corporation announced a partnership with semiconductor manufacturer GlobalFoundries.

The partnership not only helped Ford better access to globalfoundries-produced semiconductors (GlobalFoundries is currently one of Ford's Tier 1 suppliers), but also exemplifies the fact that smart car manufacturers are beginning to place a high priority on leveraging modern semiconductor processes.

In addition, artificial intelligence (AI) has begun to play an important role in the transformation of the automotive industry. Machine learning in artificial intelligence has begun to support digital twins, which are virtual models of physical objects or systems.

Sensors connected to related objects or systems help provide real-time data about their status or performance and enable models to be updated in real time. With simulation, tests can be performed virtually, allowing decisions about systems or objects to be made without the need for time-consuming and costly physical testing.

Another benefit of agile development, which automakers need to embrace technology-driven, is that it helps to create new ideas for manufacturing and development.

The auto manufacturing industry has experienced a century of development, but in order to achieve a long-term foundation, automakers must adopt technology-driven concepts, fully learn valuable lessons, and learn from the ideas of new automotive forces in the market.

While automakers focus on safety and quality requirements, they also need to integrate more flexible workflows into the certification, testing, and approval process for electronic products that support modern vehicles.