What's your strategy for effective automotive testing?

An effective strategy for automotive testing encompasses a multifaceted approach that integrates various methodologies to ensure the safety, reliability, and performance of vehicles. This strategy involves a combination of continuous integration, thorough simulation, real-world validation, data-driven analysis, and proactive risk assessment. Continuous integration plays a pivotal role by facilitating the seamless integration of software and hardware components throughout the development process. It involves frequent and automated testing of code changes to detect and rectify issues early, preventing the accumulation of bugs that can lead to more complex problems down the line.

-In my experience I’ve seen many ways for test and validate automotive features. From my point of view, the main reason to make tests is surely reach the costumer perception about our product. It means surely EXPERIENCE with the product, which means try the product as a client will try, or choose the way to be more nearby than what it wants to see, smell, and feel. Today, I consider that simulation tools, like Digital Twin, could improve this way trough an immersive experience, but based on the real data, collected from many sources. So, finally, to get back effective results in the tests we must to know much more about costumer expectations that only Engineering rules: we must to use our data bases to choose a disruptive approach.

In today automobiles there are lot of ECUs introduced because of this there is a possibility that ECUs can malfunction and it may leads to very critical hazards sometimes. to overcome this issues or to protect environment, end user or any pedestrains it is very much necessary to test the sw before actually delivering.

It also helps to create a proper plan and align testing strategy is well suited for Hardware or Software components. The approach for software testing may entirely follow a different approach and aligned with software development milestones

The real challenge in product evaluation is to understand what customer is trying to accomplish exactly and not just following the specifications shown in prints. Sometimes the expected end result can’t be defined into definite specifications. I think, building test strategies from product level to system level could close this gap to some extent.

Completely agree, however there needs to be the subjective whole car evaluation to achieve the connection..Great cars are more than the tick lists and how this all comes together should be part of the car and brands DNA that filters through from validation to emotive feelings..Targets and there validation need to align with the human elements in an emotive way

Both, testing methods and objectives, need to be aligned with the specific requirements that a system or component needs tom fulfil. A verification and test plan will need to contain a multitude of test methodologies. e.g. structural components need to be tested for durability, safety, and if exposed to the elements also environmental testing, amongst others

The correct choice of the correct method and tools avoid waste of time and resources, have a knowledge of the product application is very important for this selection, you can add or discard variables on your process according final customer requirements, also predictions and prevention of future quality issues ??

The test plan and method obviously depends on the clear definition of the testing objective. However, while defining the testing objective, the project leader has to see it from both, the very narrow, niche perspective of what is being tried to achieve as well as the broad view of what it will do to the larger picture of the business in terms of vehicle development. This helps, to keep contingencies in the test plan and if there comes a need to tweak the plan and even the test method in order to cater to the sudden new demands be it from the customer, new benchmarks or regulatory change in automotive landscape, the same can be seamlessly incorporated.

As a automotive electronics sales engineer, I believe quality products made from quality components, and quality components rely on molds and dies. Quality is always the core for everything related to auto industry, as it concerns to the users on the road, which is not allowed to have the mind of fluke.

Trends and metrics. They are the key to monitor the activities. Metrics should be all automated, with just the effort to create them. The metric tells you where you are, while the trend tells you where you are going and how fast. One important thing about automation: keeping in mind that not always having 100% of automation pays off. There are cases in which manual testing is still more efficient (for example, a test case which runs once every 2 months and takes 1 minute to execute, when it happens to be complicated to automate). Also, vmanual exploratory testing is very important and must be executed in a structured and controlled way. Never stop optimizing and improving and your project will success.

Most important to find real application and find the ways to simulate that exact application for testing and record test results. Real application should be simulated through composite work cycle to prevent over testing any testing event.

100% of your customers are subjective evaluators. Unfortunately, not a 100% of your executives approving your products are going to represent your typical customers. When these decision makers evaluate the vehicle, whether subjectively or objectively, they may focus on something your customers are not. Knowing your customer is paramount. Knowing your competitors is second. Ride with your customers. Even ride with your competitor's customers. These "data points" are often pushed to dealer comments or out sourced to specialty marketing companies. The decision makers really need to meet the customers at the retail space. Ask the customers: What are you driving now? What do you like about it? What don't you like about it? Let's go for a ride!

Tests need to be done to confirm the product meets the design requirements, specifications and potential failure modes. This seems obvious, but it is important to start well the development with clear and robust definition of the requirements and specifications, then will be clear the tests objectives.

In my experience, introducing SAFe at first was a big impact for the testing activities. After 2 years, I can say that it helped the overall quality of the software. Before starting a project, choose always the best process and remember: do not shape the project on the process, but shape the proccess on the project. Following 100% all the rules of a process never pays off. Be smart, flexible and creative.