Achieving Optimum Product Performance through the Use of Systems Engineering

The complexity of automotive systems continues to rise. Consumers demand more and more features on their vehicles, including those that provide comfort, convenience, and safety. At the same time, the reliability of automobiles continues to improve. Today's automobile manufacturers are looking for suppliers that can provide increased feature content, and at the same time provide highly reliable, flawlessly executed systems. This paper will describe a systems engineering process that is employed at one automotive industry supplier. Borrowing a page from the aerospace industry, we'll describe a rigorous process and methodology for developing and documenting requirements, creating solutions to meet those requirements, and validating those solutions against the requirements. Several case studies will be described that demonstrate the benefits derived through the use of the process, its tools and its methodologies.