Wednesday 2023-03-15

​​In the fall of 2024, two major Faurecia Clarion Electronics (FCE) customer projects will go into series production. FCE will then supply Volkswagen with cluster displays and systems for in-vehicle entertainment, core products for a digital, connected cockpit. This is the first series project for Volkswagen with this type of product. And on top of that the quantities are high; around 1.4 million vehicles shall be equipped over the entire duration of the project.

"The customer order alone is a great success for us. We have worked hard for almost five years to be nominated for this project." says Ralf Drauz, Managing Director and Global Account German OEMs at Clarion Europe. "But the significance goes much further. Because without the close cooperation with HELLA, this customer nomination would possibly not have happened. It is therefore a great success that we came into this program as FORVIA, so to speak, and an excellent example of how HELLA and Faurecia complement each other."

One crucial hurdle is hidden behind the somewhat cryptic acronym ASPICE. This refers to a uniform automotive standard that is used to assess the maturity of development processes. It promises higher quality, more reliability. In customer projects, it is becoming increasingly relevant for project allocation. This was also the case with the Volkswagen project that has now been acquired. Drauz states: "We were fully responsible for the product development itself, and are able to deliver a system of hardware and software from a single source. However, we probably would not have achieved the required conformity with the ASPICE standard with our usual methods. HELLA played a decisive role in helping us with this."

HELLA had already begun to introduce the new tool landscape Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) in electronics development in the summer of 2020. Around 60 percent of all tools that had been in use until then are to be gradually replaced in the course of this. "In this respect, it was a real stroke of luck for us that HELLA and Faurecia announced their collaboration just one year later," says Drauz. "Instead of setting up our own tool landscape, we were able to benefit directly from the synergies from the cooperation with HELLA."

Immediately after Day One, for example, a joint pilot project was launched to introduce application lifecycle management at FCE, and the project was subsequently successfully confirmed in a proof of concept. The fact that the ALM tool landscape can, for example, guarantee specific traceability within the development process, as required by the ASPICE standard, was one key factor in the successful nomination by Volkswagen in July 2022.

Production will start at the HELLA Electronics plant in Indaiatuba, Brazil. Faurecia Clarion Electronics is currently setting up an engineering team there, also due to the proximity to Volkswagen's development center near São Paulo. "Launching production at HELLA was the optimal solution for us," explains Ralf Drauz, "because it was Volkswagen's clear requirement that production should start at a plant that was already qualified. The plant in Indaiatuba was able to meet this demand. At the same time, since we have the development and production teams in close proximity to the customer, we can offer Volkswagen the best possible service."

Consequently, HELLA also benefits from this joint customer project. Efforts for development and production are charged accordingly; but above all, the new Application Lifecycle Management can also undergo a substantial practical test and be tested in a real environment.