The Center for Automotive Research Management Briefing Seminars (CAR MBS), in Traverse City, MI, continues to be one of the leading automotive leadership events in the world. This year’s event, held August 6-8, 2019, has a lineup of speakers and topics spanning multiple disciplines that are top of mind in today’s automotive environment. This year, we are seeing a strong emphasis on strategies and technologies related to connected and automated vehicles, electrification, automotive industry insight, as well as several keynote presentations from leading industry executives. These complex topics reflect the challenges and subsequent disruptions to the today’s business models that must be understood and overcome in order to remain competitive.

Key to a technology company’s insight into the automotive industry is understanding the complexity of OEM’s new products as well as emerging business models. This subject will be discussed in several briefings this year at CAR MBS. With vehicle electrification, we also see a big reduction in traditional vehicle complexity in the propulsion areas; however, this is offset with the complexity of creating affordable electric propulsion systems, especially the amount of new software that must be developed. Handling this complexity expansion and reduction as well as accommodating millions of lines of new software into the vehicle development process (VDP) is central to a technology company’s solutions in automotive.
Another key challenge in managing next-generation automotive vehicles is how to achieve flexibility in managing future products with the speed of which new capabilities are required. Indeed, vehicle features required for products just a few years out are not known nor defined at this time.

How does one reduce overall vehicle complexity and provide the flexibility to handle future vehicle requirements while providing digital continuity for older vehicles? Adopt a product innovation platform. Aras brings to the table a world-class, low code, highly configurable product innovation platform with a leading-edge business model. Recognized by both Forrester and CIMdata as a leader in this area, Aras continues to invest heavily into processes and systems that improve product lifecycle management capabilities for next-generation automotive. This winning strategy results in quick deployment with minimal impact to the overall OEM’s vehicle development process (VDP).

CAR MBS offers insight into where the automotive industry is going, what challenges must be overcome, how business models are evolving, the emergence of new technologies, and the speed at which these changes are occurring. I urge you to take to opportunity to attend CAR MBS and reconnect with previous participants as well as create new contacts in areas where you share mutual interests.

In the meantime, if you would like to discuss what Forrester and CIMdata say about the Aras platform, email me at [email protected] or call me at +1 248.918.0580. 

I hope to see you there!