A SPICE-based software supplier qualification mechanism in automotive industry

Car makers depend more and more on the software they acquire, which has forced them to address the issue of assessing the quality of the acquired software. European car makers approach this issue by checking the capability of the suppliers' software process. Fiat Auto, since the year 2001, has been taking proactive actions to address the situation. The basic strategy has been to set up criteria for qualifying software suppliers based on measuring the capability of their software processes. In this article, this qualification mechanism is described in detail. The innovative aspect of the approach is to consider the results of a SPICE (ISO/IEC 15504) assessment as one of the contractual requirements to let a software company become eligible for software supplies. As a positive effect, the assessments made on the software process have allowed Fiat Auto to select suppliers on the basis of some objective and quantitative evidence of their level of quality. In addition, this initiative has been giving Fiat Auto a deeper knowledge of the way its suppliers produce software: this is a fundamental step to building up the capability of monitoring and driving the software projects in a collaborative effort with the suppliers, which can benefit from having possible improvement opportunities pointed out