- Offering the best quality from each industry is a big challenge as customer requirements are changing through time. Some of the traditional and complex industries like the auto industry are no exception from this development. The auto industry in the common era, the so-called Industrial 4.0, faces lots of changes due to digitalization and the increasing use of software in the Automotive Industry in Germany.
- These changes comprise e.g. the launching of sensors for air quality measurements, park assistants, Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), automated or autonomous driving and more demanding requirements regarding the functional safety of cars. Hence, suppliers at various levels in the supply chain, the so-called Tier1 ... n suppliers, need to be prepared for new product features and more flexible products, also because the end user hasnew requirements regarding mobility, safety and comfortability. This is in particular valid for Tier1and Tier2 suppliers, i.e. for direct suppliers to the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and suppliers to Tier1 suppliers, respectively.
To meet these new requirements the OEM has to implement comprehensive changes in production lines and montage, employ more automats and robots instead of humans and add more software to cars. To realize that, two industries have to join, the auto industry and the software industry. However, these two industries have different time frames for product design and prototyping, development and production. Furthermore, when two industries are joining for creating new features, products or services, the main challenge is that different quality requirements have to be fulfilled. In the case of the Automotive Industry and software industries a historically grown and well-established industry (Automotive Industry ) meets a recently growing and flexible industry (software industry). Both industries have different maturity levels, different quality management