The automotive industry is facing significant technological challenges in developing new and innovative features and services. When defining their products, vehicle manufacturers must anticipate future technical advancements in microelectronic platforms, sensors, and semiconductor technologies. At the same time, suppliers and semiconductor manufacturers need early insights into the requirements for upcoming features and services to be able to invest in technology development with confidence.
As part of the “GENIAL!” project funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), eleven partners collaborated to develop concepts and methods that help companies in the automotive industry work together more effectively and prepare for the future. The project specifically focused on optimizing the collaboration between automotive manufacturers and their component and technology suppliers to accelerate innovation across the automotive value chain.
The prototypical automotive microelectronics roadmap developed in GENIAL! provides a strategic framework for identifying future market needs, use cases, system models, and technical requirements in the field of automotive microelectronics. This roadmap establishes a shared understanding of the microelectronics requirements of future highly innovative vehicles across the entire value chain. The results enable all market participants, as well as research institutions and policymakers, to manage investments and research activities more effectively. In turn, this facilitates the implementation of significantly shorter and more reliable development processes, allowing new, innovative automotive components to be realized more quickly.
The project was based on a model-based system development approach that utilizes the Systems Modeling Language (SysML) as a modeling language, now integrated into SysML v2. This approach is supported by the AGILA database and further enhanced by the IRIS (Interactive Roadmapping of Innovative Systems) tool, both developed within the project. AGILA serves as a centralized database for capturing the essential information and providing documentation, consistency checks, and version control.
The IRIS tool enables collaborative modeling, exploration, planning, and evaluation of solution alternatives. It also supports non-technical information, allowing considerations such as security of supply, and enables visualizations for roadmapping. To encourage widespread adoption, the project participants will release tools such as AGILA and IRIS as open-source solutions, making them accessible for anyone interested in creating and maintaining roadmaps.
The innovation modeling methodology “IMoG” (Innovation Modelling Grid) defines activities, roles, and process models for the collaborative creation of roadmaps. This spans from the initial comparison of models in the problem and solution space to the practical application of the AGILA and IRIS tools. Documentation of the methodology, along with several training videos, is available for free download.
