The emerging role of physical test in product development

SAE 100 Future lookSAE 100 Future look: In SAE's 100 years, the process of building automotive vehicles has undergone major transformations.

In the early days, we used a “build and ship” approach. Then, as we began to scale volumes and realized the importance of quality, we added testing to the process, leading to a “build-test-ship” approach.

For most of the 100 years, this was physical test's traditional role, with a special focus placed on quality and testing since the 1980s. However, in the past decade, we have seen a significant emphasis on reducing automotive product-development cycles from 4-5 years down to 12-18 months. The notion of “zero prototyping”-the goal of which is to produce acceptable, working models in the first attempt-was recently introduced. Both these trends caused simulation to be added formally into the design cycle, resulting in a “simulate-build-test-ship” approach. Simulations created the strong need to calibrate mathematical models with test data earlier in the product-development cycle.