A Boost for ZF Developers

As a former testing engineer, Bastian Schubert, who is in charge of Validation Strategy & Reliability at ZF, has a detailed understanding of the conventional development processes in the automotive industry. Testing hardware prototypes is extremely expensive and time consuming: “There are phases where all you can do is wait. For example when a new prototype is being built. During that time you do not gain any knowledge. It is lost time that you could put to better use.”

In view of quantum leaps in such areas as electromobility, the software-defined vehicle, increasingly networked systems in the vehicle and automated functions, similar paradigm shifts are needed in R&D – even more so as cost and time pressures continue to escalate despite an increasingly dynamic technological environment. This makes it indispensable to establish cross-divisional processes that will save time while generating and nurturing the kind of knowledge that will yield ongoing benefits for all future development work.

Lean validation is a process that meets those criteria. Introduced by ZF in 2017, within five years it saved the company over 100 million euros. The basic principle: the hybrid utilization of physical and virtual tests. In the past, simulations were limited to a traffic light function, indicating whether physical validation with hardware could begin. Today they are part of the development process from the planning stage to release. Data from individual components from the field or past validations are included in the simulation. The more data can be obtained for individual components, the more accurately the model will predict the behavior of new components or systems. Bastian Schubert: “We no longer set up the design verification plan for tailor-made lean validation processes to test the entire system. Instead, the tests are focused on individual, new components and complement the data with simulation results. The demonstrated reliability of the product is then equivalent to or even better than the complex testing of the overall system.” The use of prior knowledge and simulation results has generated substantial savings by avoiding unnecessary test runs. Today lean validation is applied in more than 80 percent of the development processes at ZF. Because the knowledge from each individual process is in turn incorporated into the models, lean validation is a system that continuously improves itself.