The value of expert advice in automotive procurement

Ensuring that each component is fit for its role is not an easy job. In each and every case the car maker is looking for a component that is just right. A wish to keep costs down can result in pressure to under-specify, but clearly that could result in a product that won’t be up to the task it needs to do. An eye on ensuring perfect performance might lead to over-specifying, but that will result in a higher than necessary cost, and thus elevate the price of the car. In a competitive industry, across 30,000 components, even the tiniest cost variation can have a significant impact.

Small failure, big problem

Flash memory plays an important role in many of today’s cars. Any car with a visual display will use Flash to store information and serve it to the screen. Yet the engineers and designers who specify components for these visual displays aren’t necessarily experts in Flash memory, and may not be aware of the many different grades of memory that exist, from consumer grade right the way up to industrial Flash memory that can withstand extremes of temperature and humidity.

Recently Cardwave saw an example of the kind of problems poor Flash memory selection can cause, when Tesla recalled more than 130,000 Model S and Model X cars because of what it called ‘accumulated wear’ on the 8GB eMMC memory that is integral to these cars’ media control units. The result was that the media control units stopped working, so drivers didn’t have access to some safety features according to the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The recall allowed the eMMC memory to be replaced with 64GB memory.

This was both embarrassing and expensive for Tesla. “We don’t know if any advice about selecting appropriate memory was sought or given, but we do know that we’ve provided precisely this level of advice to vehicle makers in the past, and that in doing so we have almost certainly saved them considerable headaches. One case in particular provides a number of learning points,” said Norbury.

Specify your SD card

Cardwave were bidding to provide SD cards containing navigation data to a company with a contract to provide an in-car navigation and entertainment system to a global automotive manufacturer. The company were in a good position to source these cards as well as provision them with data, as sourcing Flash memory in different formats is part of Cardwave’s core business. However, the company discovered that the automotive manufacturer was planning to buy the SD cards itself.

Above: the average car includes over 30,000 components, many of which are electronic

Cardwave preferred to provide the cards as part of its service, and so called a meeting with the automotive manufacturer to discuss this. “It’s a good thing we did, because we discovered something that could have been a disaster for them. The meeting revealed that there was a disconnect between the engineering and procurement teams, which meant the SD cards being considered were not of an appropriately robust specification.”

Norbury explained that what had happened was fairly straightforward. The engineering team realised that an automotive grade card was needed to handle the demands that would be placed on it, but a purchasing assistant had been researching consumer grade SD cards online. The differences between automotive grade and consumer grade cards are many, and they include robustness and price. Consumer grade cards would be cheaper than automotive grade, and so they would result in lower build cost for the automotive manufacturer, but their specifications would be less robust, they would not be fit for purpose, and Cardwave anticipated that there would be device failures as a result.

Making the grade

The purchasing assistant hadn’t been tasked with looking for the cheapest options around. They’d been researching consumer grade SD cards because the navigation system had been classed as a consumer application that just happened to be located in a car.

And to an extent that does seem like a reasonable thing to have happened. After all, at the time consumers were happily buying standalone navigation devices for use in their cars from a range of online and high street stores. They often used SD cards to store mapping data.

However, the demands made on Flash memory cards used in standalone satnav devices are far less severe than those of an in-vehicle system, and which the automotive manufacturer would need to factor in when specifying cards.

For example, an automotive manufacturer has to specify cards that can withstand instant switching on and off every time the engine is started and stopped. This delivers shock that is equivalent to two power cuts, multiple times, when the system is in use. There are also rather different requirements in terms of ability to withstand temperature changes, with in-vehicle temperature ranges likely to exceed those expected from a consumer satnav device. Such factors put a lot of stress on Flash memory. In this particular case the SD cards chosen were expected to function faultlessly for the whole lifetime of the car.

Cardwave spent time with the automotive manufacturer detailing some of the complexities around different grades of Flash memory, and explaining that consumer grade cards were not going to be able to meet the demands placed on them in this situation. The technical and quality teams within the automotive manufacturer agreed, and after some discussion the purchasing team decided that they would need to find budget to purchase a higher grade of card.

All in a day’s work

For Cardwave this is all part of the service. While the company’s core business is purchasing Flash memory and providing faultless duplication for customers, it is also very aware that its knowledge and contacts within the sector are likely to be far superior to that of most of its clients. “That’s fine,” added Norbury. “We wouldn’t expect a customer not steeped in this sector day in, day out, to have the same levels of knowledge as us.

“What we do expect, of ourselves, is a commitment to ensuring our customers get the Flash memory products most suited to their needs. If that means advocating that they spend a little more than they’d intended, then that’s what we do. We would also advise a customer that they can spend a little less when the situation warrants it.”

In the case of Cardwave’s automotive manufacturer, the company thought it was ready to start planning the next stage of work, when it learned that they’d gone to a company that supplies promotional USB cards to quote for the Flash memory for their in-vehicle navigation system. This was not going to work.

Promotional USB drive suppliers tend to use consumer grade memory, and for very good reasons. They need to keep materials costs as low as possible to meet customer expectations for low spend on promotional goods, and they know that their customers can absorb some device failures easily. What are a few faulty promotional USB drives in the scheme of things for them? But a few faulty SD cards in a car would be little short of a disaster. Sourcing the perfect card was not the end of the story

Norbury said: “We wanted to help the automotive manufacturer keep costs down, so we made an introduction to Micron, a memory manufacturer we knew well and had worked with before. We were able to negotiate a competitive price and this was accepted. But – and here is a significant lesson that shows how complex the flash memory business can be – Micron was not prepared to provide performance guarantees or warranties because they did not know anything about the system their card would be used with. This turned out to be a wise move.

Above: Ensuring that each automotive component is fit for its role is not an easy job. therefore, finding expert advice is key

“We provisioned the SD cards, and the in-vehicle navigations systems were all set up and running. Everyone was happy. Then, after a few months, the SD cards started failing. Customers returned their cars with faulty navigation systems. Warranty claims were being passed to the navigation system manufacturer to handle, and the cost to them was becoming significant.

“When we stepped in and tested the SD cards, we found no fault with them. Along with Micron we discovered that something was making the cards start to write to themselves, then erase what they had written, continuously, effectively wearing themselves out. That something turned out to be an inconsistent power supply from the card reader to the SD card. So, we investigated the card reader.

“We discovered that the card reader which had been purchased by the automotive manufacturer was not operating to SD Association standards, and that it was not therefore certain to function with SD Association compliant cards. Crucially for this particular case, the reader was not able to successfully handle power fluctuations generated by people actually using their car. This meant it delivered variable power to the SD card, and this caused the SD card to fail.

“When we understood the situation we were able to advise the automotive manufacturer on a solution. They addressed the problem directly with their card reader supplier. Thanks to Micron’s earlier foresight regarding warranties, they were not liable for claims.”

A smoother upgrade process

All of this experience helped Cardwave build a good relationship with the automotive manufacturer, and continued to supply them with SD cards. As time progressed there was a need for higher capacity SD cards to be used, and Cardwave proposed moving from Micron to SanDisk as the card supplier. “We had been using SanDisk cards for other work, and we knew they would be reliable in this environment,” Norbury added.

SanDisk were able to provide Cardwave with extensive industrial level material, including detailed performance information, test results, compliance with the Production Part Approval Process (PPAP) standard used across the automotive sector, IMDS records, quality reports, failure rate analysis and more. They also provided warranty support.

The automotive manufacturer was much better informed about Flash memory complexities by this stage, and was happy to accept support, which included helping them with writing a specification and setting out their testing requirements.

Not just about automotive

While this experience relates very specifically to the automotive sector, the learning points are applicable in many other areas. The most important point is that not all Flash memory is the same.

Memory manufacturers produce cards with different technical specifications, suitable for different environments and workloads. Inevitably, more robust cards will be more expensive, but selecting a card for a particular job isn’t just a matter of price. There are many sophistications and nuances in Flash memory card specification, and finding the correct combination of these for a particular customer is Cardwave’s speciality.