Blogs The Journey to Common Requirements Management: Insights from ams OSRAM

The Journey to Common Requirements Management: Insights from ams OSRAM

July 10, 2024

Ask anyone who has recently purchased an automobile or home safety system: lighting has come a long way. Today’s smart illumination solutions are complex engineered systems consisting of hundreds or thousands of individual light emitters. The digital brains behind these solutions are small, lightweight, and powerful semiconductors—many of which are the brainchild of ams OSRAM. 

Co-headquartered in Munich, Germany, ams OSRAM is a global leader in intelligent sensors and emitters. With over 5,500 engineers, 15,000 patents, and 20,000 employees worldwide, this technology dynamo designs and builds a mix of high-performance LEDs and lasers used in diverse automotive, industrial, medical, and consumer applications.

ams OSRAM is known for innovation. Its ground-breaking EVIYOS® family of HD matrix LEDs distributes high-resolution automotive lighting-while saving energy—by selectively powering only the necessary LED pixels for each automotive scenario. 

We caught up with ams OSRAM development engineers Georg Forster and Harald Tritschler at a recent Codebeamer Customer Exchange, where they shared their company’s journey toward a common requirements management solution. Their findings are illuminating for any company that must manage requirements, variants, and quality in a complex, fast-paced technology environment.

The ams OSRAM journey started with a clear and critically important objective: Tame complexity. Consider that a single lighting solution may involve thousands of intelligent LEDs that must be connected and controlled—sometimes individually—in multiple usage scenarios. The complexity of specifying, verifying, and validating requirements across multiple overlapping solutions necessitates a structured systems engineering approach. 

Over the years, different teams had adopted differing sets of tools to manage their complex requirements. Shortly after ams acquired OSRAM in 2019, the teams initiated a search for common requirements management tool that could fit all of their needs. 

As the team progressed, it soon became apparent that Requirements Management was just one of three closely related areas that needed to be addressed. The other two were Variant Management and Test Management. Could they find a tool that spanned all three, while meeting ams OSRAM’s rigorous usability, accessibility, and regulatory requirements? 

The selection process was analytical and comprehensive, eliciting over 200 requirements spanning 15+ requirements categories—all weighted and assessed by a cross-functional team. The more the team explored the outcome, the more one tool came out on top: PTC Codebeamer.  

“Codebeamer supports us in the development of both IC and complex LED and laser-based systems” explained Georg Forster, ams OSRAM development engineer. “It provides all teams with curated and reliable content as a single-source-of-truth over the entire lifecycle.”  

Evaluation to full rollout went smoothly with multiple stages. In 2021 the team conducted its evaluation, selected Codebeamer, and established a set of early adopter projects. In March 2022 the team rolled out a Codebeamer implementation customized to ams OSRAM development flows, after which all new projects were invited to start with Codebeamer. The following year, in September 2023, the organization updated its development process and welcomed all remaining engineers to Codebeamer. 

ams OSRAM utilizes a V-Model approach to ensure a single source of truth across projects. Its complex lighting solutions typically require multiple project streams to deliver carefully choreographed functionality. For example, an ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) driver may be packaged with pixelated LED chips in a customer-specified LED package. All three projects—the ASIC, pixelated LED chips, and packaging that houses them—must evolve in parallel to fulfill customer needs. 

Replacing multiple point to point tools with a single solution spanning requirements to test management has streamlined and simplified ams Osram’s product development process. Today, the team relies on Codebeamer to manage stakeholder alignment and improve supplier management processes. In addition, the team now links requirements and test data to supporting processes, including change management and DFMEA (Design Failure Model and Effect Analysis), a process that helps engineers track and manage potential risks.  

The new solution also helps improve quality by providing visible verification from requirement to test case to test report. Quality engineers can trace each requirement to test case, test environment, individual test run, and test run report. In addition, backwards traceability allows them to understand exactly which requirements are associated with a specific test report. 

“Sense the power of light” is the axiom built into every ams OSRAM lighting solution.  

The Codebeamer requirements and test management implementation helps ams OSRAM making that promise a reality.

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Hanna Taller

Hanna Taller is a content creator for PTC’s ALM Marketing team. She is responsible for increasing brand awareness and driving thought leadership for Codebeamer. Hanna is passionate about creating insightful content centered around ALM, life sciences, automotive technology, and avionics.

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