An Investigation of Manufacturing Challenges in Automotive Software Development from a Lean Perspective

Paper in proceeding, 2009

The automotive industry is facing a tremendous growth in software and system engineering in product development. This is pressing the automakers to build up software competencies and elaborate efficient processes for product development and production. The involvement of manufacturing engineering in product development has consequently become imperative since the increase in software-based systems implies a greater number of product variants and a higher degree of complexity to be managed in the manufacturing processes. This paper presents an investigation of the interaction between the functions of product development and manufacturing in automotive software development from a lean production perspective. The primarily objective of the study presented in this paper is to increase the understanding of the area by using complementary perspectives found in related literature and the empirical results of a previous explorative multiple case study undertaken at two Swedish automotive companies. Since automakers aim to achieve product differentiation in a broad market and cost leadership by adopting lean production emerged issues were primarily analyzed from a lean perspective. Challenging issues were found and the analysis indicated that it is useful to adopt a lean approach within the realm of the investigated area of interest since it seems to constitute an appropriate foundation for remedial measures.