Elektronik automotive magazine has published an article describing work done at Daimler Chrysler on managing diversity in the automotive domain.

A basic problem automotive systems developers are facing is the large number of possible vehicle functions and options due for example to differences in target markets, vehicle type and engine capacity.

This variability can only be handled economically through strategic reuse and this requires a formal model for the variability inherent in the product line.

The article describes an approach to this using the pure::variants specialist solution for managing variability and product lines in conjunction with the widely-used Simulink® toolset.

Here’s the blurb:

A characteristic of today’s motor vehicles is a wide range of variants with slightly different functions. Since this variability has to be reflected in the software development models, it is essential that there are concepts for systematically handling the variability of functional models. Differentiating between the central and model specific variability information allows uniform handling in Simulink and creates an explicit representation of distributed model variability.

I couldn’t have said it better myself…

The original version of the article is in German but an English version can be downloaded from the Software Acumen web site here: Handling functional variants in Simulink® models (PDF 898kb opens in new window)

Simulink is a registered trademark of The Mathworks Inc.