Kautex drives safe, sustainable mobility with digitalization

Challenge

Kautex wanted to digitalize its mechanical products for safe and sustainable automobile mobility.

Kautex, one of the world’s largest automotive suppliers and a pioneer in mechanical products, has multiple facilities spread across geographies. From developing the first blow-mold machine in 1949 to the first full plastic hybrid fuel tank, the company has been a trendsetter when it comes to innovation and innovative products. 

In keeping with this legacy, the organization was keen to lead the automotive industry’s paradigm shift from hardware to software-enabled systems, while also contributing to the development of safe, sustainable transportation solutions. This required Kautex to meet an increasing market demand for intelligent products that are compliant with industry standards such as ISO 26262 (functional safety) and Automotive Software Process Improvement and Capability Determination (ASPICE).  

Kautex developed Rhapsody, an efficient and intelligent in-house fuel tank system. The software-controlled system aimed to minimize evaporative emissions from traditional mechanical fuel tank systems through precise control of fuel valves. To turn this bold idea into reality and take Rhapsody to market, Kautex needed to build the capabilities to develop production-ready software. By partnering with TCS, Kautex established an in-house software organization.

Solution

With the shared purpose of providing safe and sustainable mobility to consumers, TCS and Kautex collaborated to establish an industry standards-compliant, end-to-end software development capability.

The journey began with a joint workshop to understand Kautex’s ecosystem. After the workshop, TCS, along with Kautex, set up the software organization, development scope, and the necessary tools. TCS helped Kautex build an agile environment with application life cycle management (ALM), devops, and continuous integration to accelerate product development.

TCS developed the end-to-end software including model-based applications and basic software. The work involved software requirement analysis, architecture design, development, verification, and validation (through model-in-loop, software-in-loop, hardware-in-loop testing), and integration. TCS also helped Kautex in hardware design, functional safety, and ASPICE processes aimed at integrating automotive software best practices into its operations. As a result of the engagement, Kautex was able to successfully achieve ASPICE level-1 compliance within one year.

This success story is being replicated in other Kautex product lines as well. Kautex and TCS believe that the in-house development of sustainable products will create a positive business impact for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) by enabling faster time-to-market and enhanced user experience.

Benefits

Building the future with intelligent software

The partnership with TCS helped Kautex achieve the following benefits:

• Fully automated validation framework for all levels of software testing—this resulted in a 50% reduction in effort and 100% traceability during the development process, leading to faster time-to-market.

• Zero delays in the rollout of software even during the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Rapid digitalization of development processes through automated ALM and devops frameworks for intelligent, safe, and sustainable mobility.

• Reusable framework that can be applied to the development of other products, thereby accelerating Kautex’s journey toward digital transformation.