Targeted and faster testing at an automotive OEM

European Auto OEM ensured targeted and efficient testing, reducing costs and accelerating development 

Challenge

A European OEM faced growing pressure to reduce development costs and accelerate time-to-market for a new vehicle program. As product complexity and functional interdependencies grew, ensuring a targeted and efficient testing strategy became increasingly difficult. Software updates or changes to a single component triggered ripple effects across other functions and components. Without clear visibility into these dependencies, determining what required validation was nearly impossible – leading to broad, unfocused prototype and HiL testing efforts.

Critical testing data such as software release plans, architecture, function models, requirements, and test execution results were fragmented across siloed tools. This made it extremely difficult to assess test maturity, identify coverage gaps, or trace test needs back to specific software changes. As a result, test teams often ran redundant or low-priority validations while missing critical gaps. This led to slow testing and delayed issue detection, creating risks for overarching program milestones.

Approach

To ensure a targeted testing strategy and connect siloed engineering data, the OEM introduced SPREAD’s Engineering Intelligence Platform in their R&D departments. Within two months, SPREAD ingested software release scope, vehicle architecture, requirements, and function models into a connected product data model. The rollout was extended across all R&D domains for the next-generation vehicle program. The teams gained access to tailored insights – integrated into their daily workflows without requiring tool replacements.

SPREAD’s Platform enabled the following:

• Unified information model that connected and contextualized data from multiple siloed engineering systems – functions, releases, requirements, components, and signals – within one structured schema
• Full accessibility via API and low-code tools, enabling testing teams to understand testing maturity, trace software changes, and build their own reports via SPREAD Studio without coding support
• Targeted testing planning, where engineers were able to map change impact against testing maturity to prioritize only what needed to be tested – no more, no less.

Impact 

SPREAD’s solution directly and quickly translated into measurable outcomes for the OEM:

• Significant annual savings: by reducing redundant testing across prototypes and HiL
• Faster time-to-market: through less misdirected testing and therefore accelerated progress
• User-friendly reporting: with R&D teams building their own dashboards to steer test execution

“SPREAD’s platform enables us to connect multiple engineering systems, making the data easily accessible, connect this and make them usable for our experts.”
— VP Integration & Testing