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NI Partners and customers know that reaching Vision Zero is not just an objective—it is the only objective.
Let's examine the different approaches NI and its partners use to help customers tackle challenges, make good decisions, and put into practice the optimal processes to achieve Vision Zero.
In the automotive industry, only the companies that continue to optimize and adapt to change will survive. At NI, our mission is to support our customers through these changes.
Understanding the areas our customers want to improve helps us translate requests and needs into viable project plans and delivery. This is how NI Professional Services add value, from providing guidance on technical approaches to delivering complete system solutions.
Three of our services are specifically targeted to improve development processes, generate higher added value, and accelerate goal achieving to help our customers reach Vision Zero.
Our resident engineers (REs) are dedicated technical professionals who work daily alongside your staff at your location. They act as partners and advisers as they study your organization’s processes, requirements, strengths, and limitations. They deliver high business value, ensure seamless transitions, and accelerate development.
Christine Brandewie, an NI RE working with Rivian for the last six months, has one goal for her project at the EV manufacturer. Brandewie’s main purpose is to decrease the time Rivian's engineers spend customizing NI solutions to their needs by incorporating real and direct feedback that shortens goal-achieving time schedules. Access to firsthand feedback that can be used right away is one of the main advantages of working as an RE.
Brandewie’s project at Rivian focuses on hardware-in-the-loop systems, which involve many different technical components communicating with each other and working together in synergy. As she said, “These are not simple to make or test!”
A large part of her job on-site is troubleshooting and resolving issues with software configurations that are slowing down development. The immediate feedback she receives from Rivian's engineers helps her find and resolve problems quickly.
When best-in-class companies need help developing test strategies to drive business insight, NI works to connect people, ideas, and technology. This is the main job of Stephen Channon, senior consultant for NI Consulting Services. With more than 25 years of experience in the automotive field, Channon can assess the industry as a whole and better understand customers’ needs and points of view.
According to Channon, a key element in collaborating with our customers has been their interest in how we can help them determine and implement a new workflow, for example, the use of continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD). They want strategies to better manage their software and test configurations to accelerate their test processes. For example, a customer asked us to help refactor its test bench software into smaller elements to reduce future qualification workload and to speed up test development time. That is exactly what we did, because at the end of the day, it really is all about digital transformation, enabling our customers to be more efficient.
Channon added that some of the most important assets we can leverage on the path to Vision Zero are the new capabilities NI has gained through acquisitions and the significant role that NI has been playing in the test data field with SystemLink™ software and the O+ platform. These continue to resonate more in the industry and show their value.
Through NI Integration Engineering Services, we are working together with our extensive network of partners to provide a wide range of options that can assist customers with designing, developing, and deploying the most complex systems.
David Pratt, senior product manager for NI Professional Services, said that he actively collaborates with his team and NI Partners to produce comprehensive solutions that deliver desired outcomes to customers. These solutions provide unique value by combining technical offerings with professional service capabilities specifically packaged to overcome the challenges customers face.
The NI Professional Services team is excited to align the delivery of our services with customers’ workflows and expectations, and to coordinate with our transportation-focused partners across the industry to help one another. Our flexibility and customization to meet customers’ needs helps them achieve their goals at a variety of levels.
Ultimately, our colleagues’, partners’, and customers’ feedback has given us unprecedented visibility into their challenges and enables us to build a clear picture of how we can work together to achieve the Vision Zero objective faster without compromising safety.
Change remains constant, so adapting to these changes, emphasizing flexibility, and developing new and better strategies for our customers’ upcoming challenges are the keys to success.
