The global automotive industry is currently facing immense challenges to deliver vehicles "Better", "Faster" and "Cheaper". Accelerated new model launches and shrinking product lifecycles have severely disturbed amortization plans to recover new vehicle development costs which poses an immediate need for the optimization of the product development process. As product development testing plays an important role in the development cycle and constitutes significant NPI (New Product Introduction) time frame, it becomes a crucial component to be considered while streamlining the NPI process.

Wipro's Automotive Group has developed a business solution framework called "PLATO" which helps in addressing various challenges being faced by the product testing teams of the automotive organization in a comprehensive seamless fashion. It is an end-to-end automotive test lifecycle management solution, which spans right from test request initiation to final test report generation and publishing.

Key Features of PLATO

• Single comprehensive IT system to manage all test labs of an OEM
• Automation of the entire testing process using a role based workflow approach
• Provides efficient test data management system which helps reliable acquisition, processing, storing, archiving and query of all test data
• Provides flexible report generation in compliance with country specific regulatory requirements
• Facilitates smooth integration with other collaborative systems like PLM, CAD/CAE, PDM and APQP
• Enables efficient collaboration among various globally spread product development and testing centers of an OEM

Benefits of PLATO

The framework helps in reducing the overall time taken to complete the test lifecycle and also reduces cost by streamlining and standardizing the entire process. It also helps in ensuring higher utilization of costly testing resources, both physical as well as human resources, and improves the overall productivity level by simplifying tedious activities and cuts down on redundant and non-value added activities.