Daimler becomes a software company

Recently, Siegmar Haasis, CIO of Mercedes Benz, made an appearance at the IBM Think 2019where he presented his vision for the automotive industry (video at the end of this article). Here is a brief summary. What has happened in the last three years since Haasis presented his vision at ReConf 2016?

Three years ago, Haasis held a Keynote on the topic of MBSE at Daimlerin which relatively moderate goals were set. It was primarily about standardized work, modeling and culture. In this presentation, he sharpens the vision and discusses the implementation in collaboration with IBM.

From product to service

Products are out, services are in, even at Daimler, which now sees itself as a mobility provider and has been pursuing this for over ten years. For example, Daimler has been experimenting with the car sharing service Car2go since 2009.

This transformation is technology-driven, and Hassis describes Daimler as an organization that wants to become a software company.

We are pushing to become a - let's call it - Software company

Siegmar Haasis, CIO Daimler

From Car to CASE

Daimler has been building cars for over 100 years, but now the time has come for CASE: Connected, Autonomous, Shared, Electric.

Connected - The connection (Connected) is about the connection to humans as well as to other machines (IoT).

Autonomous - On this topic, Haasis explained the Classification (Level 1-5) and presented a pilot project for autonomous cabs, which is being carried out in cooperation with Bosch in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Shared & Services - Services such as Moovel and MyTaxi were listed here, as well as the joint venture with BMW, which is currently merging Car2go with DriveNow.

Electric - Mercedes has introduced a new brand, EQ. The first model is due to be launched on the market this year.

Transformation of development

There are clear quantitative guidelines for the transformation:

30... 12... 1... Ready!

In concrete terms, these figures mean 30% Reuse of hardwarespecifically with the help of Frontloading to incorporate as much information as possible early on in the development process. I found it somewhat surprising that the reuse of software or requirements was not mentioned here.

Furthermore, the Development accelerated by 12 months become. As this is an absolute date, it is unclear what this year refers to. Presumably to a complete vehicle development, which typically four years, i.e. to be shortened by 25% to three years.

And the one means that digitization will only begin once this has been achieved. to one of the three dimensions costs, time or quality.

Technology trends

The foundation is data, which must be made accessible accordingly. Haasis sees four pillars there, namely:

• Digital Twin - As already practiced in the aviation industry, a complete digital representation of the product is also to be introduced at Daimler, which will accompany the entire product life cycle.
• Artificial Intelligence - Haasis does not see this as a building block, but something that needs to be embedded in the development process.
• Virtual & Augmented Reality - Haasis sees a revival of this technology, which has been established for decades, by providing up-to-date and context-relevant data.
• Systems Engineering - He sees this as a solution to break out of the traditional silos. In the spirit of this blog.

Daimler and IBM

As this presentation was held at an IBM conference, it was naturally also about the cooperation between these two companies, which has existed for decades - after all, the German automotive industry was involved in requirements management at an early stage, which was dominated by IBM Rational DOORS until a few years ago.

Here Haasis sees Model-based Systems Engineering (MBSE) as the next step in further development and also emphasizes the cooperation with IBM. He was then allowed to express four wishes for MBSE. (Aren't there always three wishes in fairy tales?) He expressed these IBM-specific wishes in relation to the Jazz platform:

• User Experience - This still needs to be significantly improved
• Support for the Exchange of modelsboth internally (jazz) and externally (ReqIF)
• A single APIso that the data remains accessible and can actually be networked
• One Automotive-specific Solution

I was somewhat puzzled by the second and third points: Jazz, with OSLC, is actually designed for interoperability, isn't it? Is this not enough, or is there a problem? Furthermore, ReqIF was developed in close cooperation between IBM and Daimler and should have been in place and working for a long time. If anyone knows more, please share your experiences in the comments below!

Conclusion

What is presented here is not new, and nobody expected it to be. Nevertheless, it is a major challenge to transform a company that is well over a hundred years old. This requires a strategic orientation, and it is clear from this presentation that Daimler has this. It is also necessary, because in many of these areas, small competitors have long since become major rivals: Whether it's autonomous driving (Waymo), electric cars (Tesla) or mobility services (Uber).

Whether IBM is the right partner for this remains to be seen. The Jazz platform got off to a rather slow start over ten years ago, but is said to have done quite well in the meantime. I will be interested to see whether IBM will implement the wish list.

Photo by Laurie Decroux on Unsplash