Volkswagen enhances engineering efficiency with Microsoft Copilot and PTC

Navigating engineering complexity

As Volkswagen continues to innovate in vehicle design and manufacturing—incorporating advanced software and connectivity features—manufacturers face escalating challenges in product development. Modern vehicles are no longer just mechanical devices but intricate systems that integrate hardware, software, and sensor data processing. This complexity is anticipated to grow over time, making efficient application lifecycle management (ALM) tools crucial.

Ayora Berry, Vice President of AI Product Management at PTC, highlights this trend, “At PTC, we work with thousands of manufacturers, including innovators like Volkswagen. When we ask them, ‘What are your most strategic initiatives?’, software-driven engineering is consistently at the top of the list. As more and more products include embedded software to process sensor data or deliver apps for end-user operation, manufacturers must manage increasing complexity in their product development.”

To address these challenges, Volkswagen Group has turned to PTC's Codebeamer, an ALM platform that enables engineers to define, validate, and trace requirements and tests for both hardware components and millions of lines of code. Robert Kattner, Head of Volkswagen Group IT Engineering, emphasizes the importance of this tool, “At Volkswagen Group, an ALM solution like Codebeamer is an important tool for enabling the efficient development of software and helping ensure that the software components for different vehicles are planned, tested, and released.”

Codebeamer manages vast quantities of data and provides workflows for authoring, reviewing, and validating requirements. Berry notes the significant time savings this brings, “A single manufacturer can have hundreds to thousands of engineers generating hundreds of thousands—or even millions—of requirement documents and projects for a single product. By managing this vast quantity of data, and by providing workflows to author, review, and validate requirements, Codebeamer customers can realize as much as 20–40% time savings.”

Accelerating efficiency with AI

Volkswagen’s embrace of Microsoft Copilot and Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing technologies within Codebeamer introduces advanced generative AI capabilities that further enhance efficiency and productivity. Microsoft's AI tools, powered by Azure OpenAI, offer scalable and secure solutions. Kattner highlights the benefits: more efficient and effective searching, analyzing, and content generation within the ALM platform.

Berry explains the practical advantages, "With generative AI, companies now have a practical technology that aids in searching, analyzing, and generating content within Codebeamer." Copilot serves as an intelligent assistant, helping engineers create new requirement specifications and test cases using specific data and business context. Kattner elaborates, "By having a copilot in the Codebeamer software, it can assist with creating new requirement specifications and test cases using our specific data and business context." This AI assistance not only improves overall quality by reducing duplication but also ensures compliance with existing engineering standards. Additionally, it aids teams in importing requirement references from legacy IT systems, streamlining the transition to modern platforms.

The collaboration with Microsoft brings significant value to PTC and its customers. Berry notes, "With Microsoft, we have a partner who provides state-of-the-art technologies—not only AI tools like Azure OpenAI, but also enterprise IT systems that offer scalability and security." By leveraging Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing's generative AI capabilities, Volkswagen makes innovation and validation easier. The integration of these technologies into Codebeamer enables the company to achieve substantial time savings and enhance the overall quality of its engineering processes.

Future-proofing engineering teams

Volkswagen's adoption of Copilot within PTC's Codebeamer underscores a strategic commitment—one that Kattner endorses with enthusiasm, "We are excited about our collaboration with PTC and Microsoft. They provide deep expertise in ALM and AI software, understand our business and markets, and have consistently delivered critical software for our needs." He also notes the widespread adoption of Codebeamer across the Volkswagen Group, "Codebeamer is used throughout the entire Volkswagen Group, and the number of active users continues to grow."

This growing user base reflects the platform's effectiveness in addressing the complex demands of modern vehicle engineering. By integrating advanced ALM tools and AI technologies, Volkswagen is not only tackling today’s development challenges but also positioning itself for sustained innovation and success in the automotive industry. Kattner emphasizes that this collaborative approach is exciting because it helps future-proof Volkswagen’s software development and vehicle engineering teams.

In an era where complexity is ever-increasing and efficiency is critical, Volkswagen's integration of Copilot and Codebeamer—powered by Microsoft and PTC—sets a new standard for leveraging AI to drive productivity and innovation. This partnership demonstrates how manufacturers can successfully unlock the full potential of AI: by combining deep domain expertise from PTC, advanced generative AI and cloud capabilities from Microsoft, and visionary leadership from customers like Volkswagen to navigate the future of vehicle engineering and unlock industrial AI transformation.