Association for Standardisation of Automation and Measuring Systems
Association for Standardization of Automation and Measuring Systems or ASAM is an incorporated association under German law. Its members are primarily international car manufacturers, suppliers and engineering service providers from the automotive industry. The association coordinates the development of technical standards, which are developed by working groups composed of experts from its member companies. ASAM pursues the vision that the tools of a development process chain can be freely interconnected and allow a seamless exchange of data. The standards define protocols, data models, file formats and application programming interfaces (APIs) for the use in the development and testing of automotive electronic control units. A large amount of popular tools in the areas of simulation, measurement, calibration and test automation are compliant to ASAM standards. Compliance shall guarantee interoperability of tools from different vendors, allow data exchange without the need for converters, and facilitate the exchange of unambiguous specification between customers and suppliers.
Abbreviation
ASAM
1998
Association
International Standardization
Höhenkirchen near Munich, Germany
Worldwide
Automotive companies: OEMs, Suppliers, Service Providers, Universities
Armin Rupalla (Chairman)
Prof. Dr. Frank Koester
Dr. Ralf Noerenberg
Dr. René Grosspietsch
Dr. Andras Kemeny
Marius Dupuis
Benjamin Engel
ASAM has more than 420 member companies worldwide. They mostly originate from the automotive industry, although ASAM does not limit the membership to this industry. Major member companies are BMW, Bosch, Continental, Daimler, Denso, Delphi, GM, Honda, SAIC, Toyota, TRW, Volkswagen and Volvo.
The member companies can be broadly categorized into three major groups:
Members pay an annual fee, which is dependent on the number of their employees. They gain free access to all ASAM standards and checker tools, and can use them for the development of tools or for providing engineering services. Furthermore, the membership allows to propose changes to existing standards or the development of new standards and to participate in their development.
Typically, large companies such as OEMs and Tier-1s have a strong interest in standards, as they are used to displace proprietary or home-grown systems and make them more independent from specific tool vendors or costly, internal tool departments. ASAM standards are an insurance for OEMs and Tier-1s that their investment in testing and development equipment is stable and can be reused for the long term.
ASAM System Providers have a significant advantage, too, as ASAM standards create a global and OEM-independent market for their products. The standards allow them to sell products to a wide group of End Users without having to implement major product customizations. This minimizes development costs and maximizes profits. Those companies, who actively participate in the development of the standards, have an additional "first-to-market" advantage.
The strength of ASAM is its large group of System Providers. Nearly two-thirds of the ASAM members belong to this group. As a consequence, ASAM-compliant tools and engineering services are widely available. According to an expert opinion, there are about 500 products worldwide available just in the area of MCD-systems.
ASAM standards[1] are primarily used in the automotive industry. They focus on the definition of communication interfaces between devices in the measurement, calibration, diagnostics and testing area. The standards cover processes and tool-chains in these areas and have the goal to reduce the development, integration and maintenance efforts for them. ASAM standards cover specific use-cases and are developed according to the following guiding principles:
Consequently, they are vendor- and technology-independent, which keeps system components of different origin interchangeable and decouples them from the continuous advances of IT platforms. This secures investments in tools and processes for the long-term.
ASAM uses common description methods for the technology definitions in the standards:
ASAM has subdivided the standards into three groups, which are briefly described in the following tables:
ASAM AE standards (Automotive Electronics) are primarily applied during the design and implementation phases of ECU software development (left side of the V-Model). They focus on:
ASAM CAT standards (Computer Aided Testing) are primarily applied during the verification & validation phases of ECU software development (right side of the V-Model), and during automated calibration and system testing on engine and vehicle test beds. They focus on:
ASAM COMMON standards are used in both areas, AE and CAT.