Embracing the Systems Approach to Automotive Diagnostics

Perhaps more than any other automotive discipline, diagnostics has been the source of fragmented and redundant efforts. Diagnostic test tools are frequently reinvented for engineering, manufacturing and dealership service activities. Embedded software to support diagnostic functions is uniquely and manually created for each ECU. Uncoordinated databases storing duplicate protocol information are common. The absence of a comprehensive diagnostic data model has prolonged these inefficiencies and prevented diagnostic activities from realizing a unified system. A systems approach, based on a comprehensive data model, can eliminate redundant and parallel efforts across diagnostic activities and improve reliability by integrating previously uncoordinated applications. A proposed structure and the benefits of such an approach are the focus of this paper.