A Framework for the Evaluation of Resource Efficiency in Automotive Embedded Systems

This article discusses the resource utilization of embedded systems in the automotive industry. Traditionally, the major cost driver — or resource input — has been regarded as the hardware cost. Issues such as software development costs and maintenance costs have historically been neglected. In order to address this, the article embraces the more comprehensive view on resources that a resource can be regarded as anything which could be thought of as a strength or weakness of a given firm. In this article the major drivers of resource consumption are identified. The work has also included several interviews with employees in order to find empirical data of the embedded systems in vehicles. This paper proposes a method to evaluate the resource efficiency of user functions implemented through the embedded system. By the use of Data Envelopment Analysis — which has proven to be a useful method — the resource utilization of six user functions is evaluated. Future work of particular interest would be to perform a more extensive case study.