Ontology-Driven and Integrated Automotive Systems Engineering

As cars become smart and connected, automotive development gets more complex. Traditional disciplines such as mechanical, electrical and software engineering can no longer remain separate, but are required to collaborate. Further, new regulations and standards require engineering activities across domains to be traceable and their outputs to be consistent. Current IT-architectures do not sufficiently support those new needs. Automotive engineering domains mainly rely on separate expert tools. Interfaces are, if at all existent, inefficient and come along with a loss of data and information. Sophisticated integration of IT-systems is the basis for solving the drawn problems, as it enables efficient and effective collaboration amongst domains. Hence, it also forms the basis for trending approaches in automotive engineering such as model-based systems engineering and function-orientation. Thus, a state-of-the-art integration architecture for the automotive engineering IT is presented in this paper. For instance, it suggests replacing former implicit relations between assets of separate systems by explicit ones through applying an ontology-driven Linked Data approach. This improves traceability and enables referencing, addressing and reusing IT-assets across expert tools. Therefore, it is further proposed to exchange data efficiently among systems in an innovative API-driven manner. The holistic integration architecture enables effective and consistent collaboration and ensures traceable work results across domains. The result is a future-proof architecture that serves as a blueprint for automotive companies to face the challenges of developing innovative cars as of today and tomorrow.