Toyota and Denso committed to model-based design

Toyota, the world's second largest car manufacturer, and Denso, Toyota's primary automotive electronics supplier, have been using model-based design and automatic embedded code generation technology by The MathWorks for simulation, modelling and code generation products in their production software development programs for powertrain control and other electronics control units.

Recently, The MathWorks announced that both companies have been successful in their efforts to transition to the MathWorks R2006b release to support their automotive mass production programs. This transition enables both companies to continue their commitment to model-based design and automatic embedded code generation technology.

"Toyota and Denso have been very satisfied by the support services and new product capabilities provided by The MathWorks and Cybernet Systems during the last three-and-a-half years of our pilot and long-term agreements for support of our production version," said Kazuhiko Hayashi, general manager, Toyota Electronics Engineering Division. "Toyota believes that the transition to R2006b will help us develop automobiles more efficiently. We expect to achieve significant productivity improvements from R2006b features, including code generation using Real-Time Workshop Embedded Coder for mass production software. Toyota has been working with The MathWorks to enhance their products, which will help to further expand deployment of model-based design in automotive applications at Toyota and Denso. We expect that our relationship with The MathWorks will continue for a long time into the future."

The transition of Toyota and Denso production operations to R2006b is the result of a successful program that included the use of Matlab, Simulink, Stateflow, and Real-Time Workshop in powertrain production programs. Over the last two years, The MathWorks has worked with Toyota and Denso to provide the advanced capabilities they required in these products, while Denso has developed comprehensive modelling guidelines, user models and training materials to prepare Toyota and Denso engineers to move their production work from R12.1, which has been in full operation since 2001, to R2006b. Adopting R2006b in production enables Toyota and Denso to apply model-based design in current and future production vehicle programs and to use automatically generated production C code for complex, real-time embedded systems.

Toyota and Denso have a major commitment to MathWorks R2006b tools throughout their advanced design and production design processes. As a result, the companies can better leverage design models to address the challenges of vehicle-level modelling, controller design, system simulation and production code generation. By expanding the application of model-based design, Toyota and Denso intend to maintain a competitive edge in the industry by delivering new vehicle designs to the market faster and more cost effectively.

"Toyota and Denso's commitment to model-based design exemplifies the way in which MathWorks software is increasingly being adopted by automotive industry leaders around the world for product design and development," said Andy Grace, vice-president of design automation development at The MathWorks. "We began our close relationship with Toyota and Denso over 12 years ago in a collaborative effort to define the engineering tools needed by the automotive industry. After building widespread use in their R&D groups, we set the goal of effective deployment of MathWorks software in their production environment. This effort required a firm commitment to improving the quality of our products for our customers. Our strong working relationship with Toyota and Denso has now enabled us to meet this goal. We are looking forward to Toyota's accelerating deployment of R2006b and Real-Time Workshop Embedded Coder for modelling, simulation and automatic code generation for production applications. We plan to continue to improve our tools to address their future production needs."