Jörg Heynkes reports on the outstanding technological developments that will change our society in the next 5, 10, 15 years in a way and at a speed that has never been seen before in human history. He talks in detail about the associated opportunities and risks for society, the economy, politics, our cities and the reality of our lives. It is a glimpse into the world of the day after tomorrow, in which humanoid robots, drones, swarm mobiles, virtual worlds and many other new technologies, always in interaction with artificial intelligence systems, will characterise our everyday lives in the age of this ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’. It is a glimpse into a world of major global megatrends in which every company faces the unique challenge of having to make its entire business model sustainable and climate-neutral in around a decade if it wants to survive economically. 

In his keynote speech, the connections between the big questions of our time become clear. How do we organise our future when the challenge is to supply 8, 9 and then 10 billion people with energy, mobility and healthy food every day without completely overburdening the planet?

The author and entrepreneur vividly describes the extent to which the technological transformation processes will also bring about far-reaching social changes.  Group intelligence, smart homes, the Internet of things, Work 4.0, the new human-machine relationship, global collaboration and questions about the social security systems of the future are considered in this unique keynote speech, as is the question of the viability of many of today's job profiles and business models.

Jörg Heynkes shows that digitalisation offers us all the technological possibilities to limit climate change globally through local action and thus to organise the decisive breakthrough in climate and environmental protection. However, he also shows how important it is for each individual to develop the necessary digital skills, to finally take responsibility for their own future and to move from thinking to acting. 

While developing the BMW’s Neue Klasse vehicle and electronic architecture, the belonging wiring harness system was also designed entirely from scratch. This approach not only aligns with industry trends but also sets new standards for vehicle harness designs. Based on the zonal electronic architecture, the rules according to DIN 72036 were used to develop harnesses with a high focus on an automated production. Therefore, some special components (e.g. connectors, fasteners) needed to be adapted or designed from the ground up as well. Like the electronics, the wiring harness system was also divided into several geometrical and functional zones which allowed us the use of step-harnesses with a minimal number of variants. Another impact on the layout of the wiring harness was the use of electronic fuses in the electrical distribution system which results in an optimised dimensioning of the individual wires. Furthermore, significant attention was given to promoting circular usage during the development of the wiring harness and its components, utilising a high percentage of recyclable materials. As a result, the BMW’s Neue Klasse wiring harness system is weight and cost efficient, combined with reduced complexity to fulfil the upcoming challenges for automotive wiring harness systems.

Autonomous driving, drive train electrification and the aim for new business models for vehicle upgrades through aftersales purchase of software enabled functions have a huge impact on all aspects of the vehicle and its lifecycle. One of the key enablers of these changes is the Software-Defined Vehicles (SDV) paradigm. By decoupling software from hardware, SDV enables to advance functional upgradeability from a legacy mid-cycle approach to a potentially continuous process. 

To enable this, SDV drives changes in the design and implementation of the electric and electronic (E/E) vehicle architecture, moving from a distributed system of up-to 150 ECUs to a zonal architecture with High-Performance-Compute (HPC) units. Individual functions no longer are delivered as system bundles of HW / SW / ECUs from a specific Tier1 supplier. Instead, software-based functions - developed in house or sourced from various suppliers – are abstracted from hardware, competing for performance and resources on general-purpose HPCs, connected to local zone controllers managing communication, electrical interconnect and power distribution. 

This paradigm changes the collaboration between the car maker, with and amongst its suppliers. Together with technical advancements, such as eFuses and faster in-vehicle networks, reducing the number of ECU to a few, almost standardized HPCs, SDV drives the simplification of network and electrical interconnect. The changes the electrical distribution system, from system connectivity down to the connector level, are expected to result in fewer variants and smaller, less complex wiring harnesses impacting the entire wiring harness and component supplier ecosystem. 

In the joint presentation, Accenture and Siemens want to discuss the challenges and opportunities arising from the orientation towards SDV showcasing how standardization, automation and new approaches to cooperation help to leverage the resulting potential.

The E/E architecture influences the bus and electric supply architecture significantly. The bus network with the estimated bus load ensures the virtual validation of the wiring harness. The start-up sequence and duration of the control unit influence directly the supply hierarchy and the electric protection technology (e.g., eFuses). These effects are shown in this presentation exemplary by a zone architecture.

The zone architecture and the related wiring harness are developed with a model-based approach – both in one consistent model. Changes in the zone are reflected directly in the wiring harness and can be experienced by the engineer. The consistent model from the zone architecture through the wiring harness is the basis for fast evaluations and ratings of the wiring harness design (lengths, weight, placement of splices, …)

A common model with all relevant artifacts of the zone included, is the basis for transparency, consistency and traceable changes.

The change management is an integrated part of the entire development process. Every change has the direct reference to the changed artifact and vice versa. Changes are bi-directional. They could be caused by changes in the zone architecture and can influence the wiring harness, but also, the other way around, if wiring harness constraints influence the zone architecture.

Zonal architectures promise a reduction in complexity of wire harnesses. On macroscopic view, zonal structures tend to implement connections in simpler wire harnesses. Especially at interfaces to zonal controllers, high performance computers and at inline connections still a big amount of pins is locally clustered. 

Modular connector kits offer potential for disentanglement, standardization and flexibility, especially at large interfaces. Self-contained partial harnesses can therefore be pre-produced manually or automatically and put together in a different place. It must be possible to create "electrically finished" partial harnesses based on the individual connector modules. Without rational structuring of the wire harness beforehand, small-scale connectors can be hindering for production through interchangeability and more assembly steps though.

When designing the required modular connectors, it is important that standardized individual modules allow the components to be used flexibly in a wide variety of applications and can be combined with one another in any way in an overall connector. 

Since automated production of the harness is the aim in the future, all components of modular connectors must be designed for the corresponding automated process steps (contact assembly, handling processes, assembling the partial harnesses).

The requirement to have modular connectors is not only limited to the plug connectors of zonal computers or similarly large computer units. These connector systems must also enable a modular structure of the pin header elements used for the electrical component (pin/tab headers). A modular structure of large coupling points (inliner) must also be possible with these systems.

In this presentation, DRÄXLMAIER outlines challenges in harness design and production and showcases analysis results concerning possible formats of modular connector kits. TE Connectivity presents its solutions for modular connectors and the advantages they have for the future production of cable harnesses and their use in vehicles.

The development of wiring harnesses in vehicles is a complex and challenging process, further complicated by data breaks, inhomogeneous structures, and technological barriers. In collaboration with leading automotive manufacturers and suppliers, fleXstructures has developed an innovative, fully digital process that combines physics-based design and validation in a single step. The objective is to create a 'living' digital twin of the vehicle electrical system that can facilitate end-to-end processes without data disruptions in real time.

A fundamental requirement in the production of wire harnesses is the representation of these on the form board. However, mapping the wire harness on the form board is not straightforward. The current development process at OEMs only begins with the creation of the form board with or after the release of the digital model. This results in the identification of issues only occurring with the wiring system prototypes, or, in the worst case, in the pre-series vehicles. It is no longer feasible to implement major alterations to the wiring system concept at this stage. Consequently, the failure analysis process is both time-consuming and costly, as it necessitates the conversion of form boards and the creation of new wiring system models to assess the proposed alterations.

Thanks to the purely digital approach described in the presentation, a direct comparison between the desired wiring system and the wiring system built on the form board can already be made during the first draft of the installation in the vehicle.

Automation of wiring harness production - A lot has happened so far, but is there still something missing?

How exactly does the OEM contribute to an automation-suited wiring harness design?

Is it possible to anchor the topic of "Design for Automatic Assembly" even further in the wiring harness development process and what methods and tools need to be developed for this?

We "Mercedes-Benz" provide information on this! We will highlight further necessary developments in the field of "Design for Automatic Assembly" in the wiring harness and present a novel method to promote an automation-suited wiring harness design as early as the ECU development stage.

But not only that - we also present how we have integrated our novel methodology into the development process and even using a fully automated software solution.

Manual production of wire harnesses is reaching its limits. To safeguard logistics chains, the level of automation should be raised – increasing throughput, processing quality and traceability.

We propose shifting labor-intensive and error-prone processes from final assembly to a highly automated pre-assembly. Specifically, sub-harnesses should be prefabricated as far as possible and fed into final assembly as production modules. Automatic forming plays a pivotal role here. It reduces the handling effort and enables the automation of subsequent processes such as taping or attaching clips. This continued production flow yields substantial efficiency gains and simplifies change management. Such automation solutions must be flexible and scalable as production volume might change.

Inter-organizational data sharing is of great benefit in supporting companies with internal optimization. Therefore, a data sharing infrastructure for automated information exchange in the supply chain and goal-oriented data processing is necessary. The Asset Administration Shell (AAS) helps implementing digital twins for Industry 4.0 and creating interoperability across the solutions of different suppliers and OEMs. It also enables standardized data exchange and improved communication, resulting in optimized processes and increased efficiency. The AAS can also be beneficial when it comes to data sharing using data ecosystems such as Catena-X. Finally, a generic use case for data exchange between companies demonstrates how an AAS can provide benefits by performing automatic exchange of material master data.

LEONI has embarked on a transformative journey by implementing a standardized digital toolchain, integrating both commercial and in-house software solutions. This initiative aims to significantly enhance processing speed, accuracy of results, and data transparency.
Versatile OEM design data input is normalized into standardized Product Designs represented by comprehensive data models.
Validated data, using rule checks, is leveraged by our Calculation department to generate accurate cost estimation results for product pricing.
In parallel, Production Engineering further enriches the data models to generate essential outputs which are consumed by production personnel and systems.
A robust Global PLM/PDM System is utilized to host a variety of data and serves as a backbone to ensure controlled and secure data distribution to all involved stakeholders.
A standardized Change Management process seamlessly communicates requirement changes from Design to Manufacturing to support accurate and timely product updates.
In collaboration with Siemens, we are not only overcoming challenges but also unlocking remarkable benefits throughout the entire value chain.

In future automotive power supply systems, electronic fuses (eFuses) will be increasingly used for wire protection and controlling the power flow. However, the transient impact of eFuses on the overall system has to be carefully analyzed due to the lack of experience compared to melting fuses and the rising safety requirements. Automated driving requires a stable power supply that should be robust against transient voltage and current pulses caused by, e.g., short circuit faults and subsequent fuse tripping. To remain fail-operational, such pulses must not affect other redundant components. To be able to analyze these aspects in early stages of development, model-based analysis in is necessary. In this presentation, the transient effects of eFuses are first compared to conventional melting fuses. Then, a frequency-domain method is presented to efficiently identify scenarios with critical transient disturbances. If critical scenarios are identified, the system has to be stabilized. To support the optimization process, sensitivity analysis is used to reveal influential parameters.

In recent years, the automotive industry has seen the widespread adoption of autonomous driving and the rapid growth of the Software-Defined Vehicle (SDV) market, leading to a transformation from traditional gasoline vehicles to electric vehicles. Additionally, advancements in E/E architecture utilizing central/zone concepts are progressing.

However, there are numerous challenges associated with autonomous driving and SDVs. For instance, in autonomous driving, there is a need for improvements in sensor technology and AI algorithms. From a cybersecurity perspective, encryption and real-time security monitoring are essential, along with the need for real-time data processing.

In the case of SDVs, the generation and processing of large amounts of data is necessary, and the integration of real-time operating systems (RTOS) is required to address network redundancy and functional safety. To realize such vehicles, high-capacity, high-speed, and highly reliable transmission paths are essential. Currently, this is achieved through electrical transmission paths, but for higher-speed and higher-capacity communication, the transmission distance becomes shorter, and EMC measures become extremely challenging.

As a result, it is expected that optical transmission paths will soon be integrated into vehicles to facilitate emerging technologies like autonomous driving and SDVs.

Currently, the standardization of wire harnesses used for high-speed communication, particularly wires and connectors, is also progressing. Previously, components were developed with unique specifications for each OEM, but as standardization advances, all OEMs will be able to adopt cables and connectors with the same specifications. This will introduce competitive principles, allowing suppliers to provide high-quality components at lower costs.

This article introduces the current state of optical components used for in-vehicle high-speed communication and discusses the standardization of components.

The automotive industry is on the brink of its biggest disruption yet, encountering unprecedented complexity and rapid transformations. This is particularly evident in the wire harness industry, where production plants are relocating further away from OEMs. This shift amplifies supply chain vulnerabilities and heightens geopolitical risks. At the same time, critical location factors continue to fluctuate unpredictably, adding further uncertainty.

Yet, while challenges intensify, the market continues to grow. More than ever, success hinges on operational excellence: delivering quality while ensuring timely production. The rising number of vehicles recalls highlights the urgent need to enhance quality assurance. By leveraging advanced technologies like AI and automation, quality levels will be revolutionized. Properly implemented, a data-driven production approach with continuous traceability will evolve quality to the next level, ensuring suppliers stay ahead in a dynamic market.

At the same time, suppliers are struggling more than ever with the rapid introduction of complex technologies and a surge in new product line ramp-ups. Without a robust ramp-up management strategy, failure is not just a risk but a certainty. A proven, holistic and structured approach that tackles issues at their root cause while remaining resilient to external disruptions is not just an advantage – it defines the difference between a flawless launch and a multi-million-dollar catastrophe. 

In summary, the wire harness industry faces a defining moment – operational excellence is no longer optional: it's the key to survival.