ASPICE – A Pathway to Future Compliance

In our lifetimes, very few products have evolved as rapidly as a typical automobile has. For perspective, passenger vehicles that we drove 20 years ago were shipped with 1 million lines of code onboard. Whereas today, the navigation system requires 20 million lines of code. In the future, a full-autonomous electric vehicle is expected to have one billion lines of code onboard to ensure optimally-safe operation.

As vehicles are packed today with various sensors, consumer electronics, and infotainment functions/features, it has led to an exponential rise in product complexity. As we see today, advanced driver assistance safety systems needed to offset all possible distractions for a user have been the most significant contributor to this change in the vehicle cockpit.

Inevitably, automotive OEMs will face a challenge in ensuring hundreds of global suppliers who manufacture various components, subsystems, and materials needed to manufacture future vehicles supply them with quality, speed, price, and requirements that the customers expect.

Automotive SPICE, or commonly referred to by the automotive industry as ASPICE, will be the way forward.

What is SPICE, and how its evolution into ASPICE matter for the automakers?

Before ASPICE, we had Software Process Improvement and Capability Determination (also known as ISO/IEC 15504, or SPICE). In 1993, ISO and IEC had developed its framework for software process assessment. Although ASPICE (Automotive Software Performance Improvement and Capability Determination) is not yet globally adopted, it is the latest standard for automotive software best practices.

The functional safety standard (ISO 26262) adopted worldwide incorporates extensive safety analysis methods accounting for random errors. However, ISO 26262 fails to account for systematic errors and software flaws.

Automotive suppliers will need to incorporate both ISO 26262 and ASPICE guidelines to ensure acceptable safety practices. Without adhering to both, automakers will face various risks and potential failures. ASPICE, or Automotive SPICE, defines processes and best practices for software and software-based system development for the automotive industry.

ASPICE differs significantly from typical regulations and compliance requirements because it evaluates more than just the products you manufacture. ASPICE also evaluates a company as a whole. For example, it also includes the support you can provide for your products and how efficient, and consistent the internal processes are.

Presented below is an Automotive SPICE process reference model overview. ASPICE is divided into process groups. Key process groups are the System Engineering Process Group (SYS) and the Software Engineering Process Group

The ASPICE process shown above is a combination of two phases. Initial phases are shown on the left, and the secondary phases are indicated on the right. Each of these points includes a corresponding testing phase, plus additional traceability and management processes. According to these standardized achievement phases, a supplier can earn ASPICE certification, and their assessment will result in specific ASPICE levels that clients take into account.

ASPICE standard is scored from 0-5. Exhibit 2 shown below presents certification levels along with their definitions:

Will ASPICE have a positive impact or otherwise on the suppliers and automakers

ASPICE standards offer a benchmark for suppliers to ensure their processes and products’ stability, resulting in an overall improvement, particularly in an industry where any mistake could cost you dearly, especially once we have autonomous-electric vehicles on the road.

It is to be noted that ASPICE has not been mandated as yet. However, automotive suppliers at some point could be evaluated for compliance with ASPICE.

With that possibility insight, it would be pragmatic for automotive suppliers to begin integrating the associated practices. Organizations such as VDA (Verband der Automobilindustrie – Association of Automotive Industry) have set ASPICE as their standard process model. This move is very likely to inspire others in the ecosystem.

ASPICE certification has been designed so that both clients and suppliers are rigorous about the products they put on the road, which will improve the automotive standard. In safety-critical industries, it is not only advisable but essential to integrate strict standards for product development – and ASPICE is the set of standards that could make that happen.

Diverse benefits are on offering if suppliers look to adopt ASPICE in their internal processes –

• They can help in reducing labor time and costs by integrating the testing process throughout production, limiting dangerous missteps, and reducing product recall
• Suppliers can identify problems and manage risks before a vehicle goes to market
• ASPICE also improves client-facing processes, allowing suppliers to avoid miscommunication and provide greater transparency from the get-go
• Wide-scale adoption could optimize the automotive industry at a pace that hasn’t been witnessed since the assembly line’s advent
• As products get more complex, development and life cycles shrink, OEMs will continue to raise the bar, requiring higher ASPICE certification levels. Hence, an early adoption for suppliers will keep them in good stead for future
• As an add-on benefit, compliance with ASPICE also certifies compliance with two other important standards – [1] ISO 26262: Road vehicles – functional safety in automotive, and [2] ISO 21434: Road vehicles – cybersecurity engineering
• In the future, for many Tier-1 suppliers who directly work with the automotive OEMs, compliance with ASPICE will become a prerequisite for doing business

The road ahead for automotive suppliers

At first, look, achieving compliance to ASPICE may seem like a daunting task; however, for any supplier who hopes to do business in the future with leading Tier 1 suppliers or the OEMs, they need to work towards adoption since ASPICE will become mandatory. Also, not to forget, the bar is getting higher all the time. Hence, the early suppliers adopt, the better it will prepare them for future demands.

On the other hand, we need to remember that ASPICE is not a concrete set of processes and systems. At this point, ASPICE is a rough guideline to help suppliers develop a set of best practices that work for them. Automotive suppliers should incorporate ASPICE standards at every level of production to stay relevant in the future.