Magneti Marelli, a Winner Across the Board

Author(s):
Paul Pham - Magneti Marelli France

Industry:
Automotive

Products:
LabVIEW, LabWindows/CVI, Signal Conditioning, PXI/CompactPCI, TestStand

The Challenge:
Testing prototypes of electronic cards used in automotive dashboards and optimizing the functional validation process of onboard software.

The Solution:
Creating a system based on the PXI platform and containing instruments, data acquisition, and signal conditioning hardware, as well as TestStand, LabVIEW, and LabWindows/CVI software.

Introduction
Magneti Marelli is an international leader in the development and production of components, modules, and systems for the automobile industry. Based in Milan, Italy, we reported revenues of more than $4 billion (US) in 1999.

Automobile dashboards have evolved a great deal over the last few years. On one hand, dashboard manufacturers need more flexibility from suppliers to meet market demands. On the other hand, quality certifications such as AVSQ, VDA6, EAQF, and QS9000 require rigorous testing and validation procedures to ensure a high level of product quality.

The Testing Process
At our site in Nanterre, France, engineers design and test electronic card prototypes, which form the basis of automobile dashboards. Our engineers first test the prototypes using a station that automates measurements. Afterwards, engineers mount the dashboard and use the station to validate the software’s functionality. To validate the software, the system performs a simulation to check the proper functioning of the on-board application software.

After engineers test and validate the prototypes and software, they pass them on to quality control, which performs functional tests on the finished product. We manufacture about 1,000 prototypes for one dashboard. Changing one line of code means that the entire software package, which easily exceeds 100 KB in size, has to be revalidated.

The PXI System
With our PXI testing platform, we reached our goals in terms of product quality while meeting our expectations in terms of deadlines, budgets, and performance levels.We designed and developed the system by integrating all the hardware needed for testing prototype cards and for simulating the dashboard environment into a National Instruments PXI-1010 chassis. We used a digital oscilloscope and multimeter from NI with pickering switching matrices during the hardware testing.

During the simulation phase, the PXI chassis uses NI SCXI-1163R andMIO 6071 data acquisition and signal conditioning modules. We placed an amplifier/attenuator downstream from the prototype card to adapt the automobile voltage range to that of the card. We also use PCMCIA modules to allow the station to work with CAN or VAN-type communications networks.

From a software standpoint, we chose Windows NT for use on the PXI on-board PC. We use National Instruments TestStand to manage the testing and simulation sequences. Our testing team writes simple tests with National Instruments LabVIEW or LabWindows/CVI graphical programming software. The real-time restraints of communications networks caused us to development an external intelligent interface driven via the RS-232 link of the PXI controller.

We use this system at our sites in France, Germany, and Italy. It is completely configured and ready to use when shipped, except for the development software. We purchase National Instruments LabVIEW or LabWindows/CVI, a component of Measurement Studio, on site so that our developers get local technical support. When writing testing scripts, our developers use routines previously validated by our testing team. This method markedly reduces development and maintenance time. We have also integrated a complete maintenance help tool into the system that the user can run from an independent executable module.

Results
We plan to incorporate NI image acquisition cards into the system. We also plan to add extended report management capabilities to it. We can continue to upgrade the system as NI introduces more PXI products, such as a 14-shot chassis.

For more information, contact:

Paul Pham

Magneti Marelli

Business Systèmes Electroniques

19 rue Lavoisier, 92002 Nanterre, France

E-mail: paul.pham@nanterre.marelli.fr

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