<http://schema.org/description>
"General Motors continues to pursue its &amp;ldquo;Road to Lab to Math&amp;rdquo; strategy that pushes more development work into the analysis realm in order to reduce the time and cost necessary to produce new powertrains. &amp;ldquo;We still need to test the vehicle for refinement,&amp;rdquo; says Dan Hancock, v.p., GM Powertrain Global Engineering, &amp;ldquo;but much of the earlier development work can now be done in math.&amp;rdquo; Hancock believes GM Powertrain&amp;rsquo;s new Engineering Development Center in Pontiac, MI, will improve calibration efficiency by as much as 50% as it rolls out 68 new calibration procedures that will reduce the number of on-road tests necessary to adjust powertrain parameters. &amp;ldquo;We&amp;rsquo;ve been able to determine the fewest number of data points necessary to produce statistically significant calibration curves,&amp;rdquo; he says, &amp;ldquo;which has allowed us to reduce our initial calibration time by 10 weeks (16 weeks on a dynamometer and undergoing analytical study versus 8 weeks on the dyno and 18 weeks of in-vehicle testing), and save more than $200 million.&amp;rdquo;As expected, GM is running all of its engine test facilities on a common operating system and to a global standard, and projects can be run on a 24-hour basis by forwarding data around the world, if necessary."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.autofieldguide.com/articles/gm-improves-powertrain-throughput>