GM-IBM Collaboration Cuts Development Time of Chevy Volt

The introduction of the Chevy Volt may stand as a testamentto the engineering prowess of General Motors,but it's also a product of a huge collaboration between the giant automaker andIBM Corp.

The twocompanies announced jointly last month that the use of IBM software, hardwareand services enabled GM to cut the Volt's development time in half, reduce theamount of crash testing and manage the vehicle's round-the-clock worldwidedesign effort.

"We helpedthem create an environment where all the tools worked together, everyone wasdesigning on the same footprint and engineering data was shared on a globalbasis," says Mark Lefebvre, marketing director for IBM Rational Software. "Itwas about helping them transform the way they do vehicle design."

IBM aidedGM's effort by employing Rational Doorssoftware to help engineers write system requirements, and by using Rational Rhapsodyfor performance and compliance testing. Also, a software environment called Rational Team Concertserved as a data backbone, enabling engineers around the world to share models,part information and software code.

IBM says italso helped GM standardize its business procedures around the vehicle designeffort by calling on IBMGlobal Services to support product design and life cycle management.Finally, IBM Power Seriesservers helped with simulations of vehicle environments and crashes, while IBMPower supercomputers put the Volt's lithium-ion battery pack through its paces.With the supercomputers, GM engineers were able to test the battery for suchphenomena as short circuiting, corrosion, water submersion and crash resistance.With the use of the server- and supercomputer-simulation, the automaker wasable to reduce the number of physical crash tests down from 600 to about 400.

As a result, GM was able to hitsits original goal of late-2010 deployment, despite the fact that it announcedthe vehicle to the public at the Detroit Auto Show in January 2007. "Theyshortened their development cycle to 29 months, whereas it's typically at leasttwice that for a vehicle like this one," Lefebvre says. "We've seen somemanufacturers take as long as 10 years to bring an advanced technology vehicleto market."