RA Consulting looks back on a year full of novel, exciting and forward-looking projects in direct cooperation with customers, users and development engineers. Investments were made especially in new technologies and products to develop solutions for the challenges of the future of the automotive industry.
With the Strategy 2025, CEO Armin Rupalla together with the managing directors and division heads gave the starting signal for a big step into the future for RA Consulting. With “Excellence in automotive MCD services & tooling” as the desired goal, the management initiated initial preparations for a changed organization within the company, prepared its managers for further development and strengthened them with external coaching tailored to their needs. Numerous strategic initiatives and targets for 2022 were formulated with the individual divisional management teams and pursued during the year.
Under the leadership of Thomas Kotschenreuther, the research and development project for Real Drive Validation started. In this project with the goal of supporting Continuous Software Integration in communication with vehicles in the field by 2024, RA Consulting was particularly responsible for unified data processing. The project was carried out in close cooperation with the “Professional Services” division, which contributed its expertise in server architectures and data processing.
The Corona pandemic necessitated many rearrangements, which resulted in employees meeting each other less. After the causal measures from politics had ended, the management, in cooperation with Hannah Rupalla, responsible for human resources, decided to organize a spring festival for the employees on the forecourt of the company buildings. In addition to crepes, burgers and wraps, new and long-time employees were able to gather and exchange ideas around a crackling campfire.
In April, RA Consulting released the “XMLToExcel” software developed specifically for OBD analyses. In 2022, the application was available to customers as a test version to check market acceptance and customer requirements. A top-class stand-alone tool was created for the extension for the organized preparation of OBD files, which was developed as part of the DiagRA® D diagnostics product. From January 2023, this product will be available as a license in the full version.
The product DiagRA® S of RA Consulting supports among other things the home office work of application engineers and ECU software developers. Due to the now professionalized diagnostic simulation concept (software in the loop), the advanced maturity level of the DiagRA® S application and the urgent demand on the market, the project manager Dr. Alexander Karmazin and his team decided to position DiagRA® S on the market from May onwards out of the validation phase initiated with selected partners. Since September 2022, this product is available as a license in the full version.
The special industry requirement includes a clearly verifiable concept for handling security-relevant information. In June, Managing Director Stephan Meichle and IT Team Leader Marcus Mikolaiczyk were again able to achieve TISAX certification for RA Consulting after an audit and intensive preparation.
Sales and product development teams participated in the Testing Expo in Stuttgart, where product innovations and promising business models were presented under the banner of the corporate alliance AETA with the guiding theme “Real Drive Validation”.
In July, RA Consulting – due to the ongoing Corona situation – held the RA User Day online for the first time. A popular event for exchanging experiences over three days on the topic of measurement, calibration and diagnostics with the experts from RA Consulting. In addition, all participants were able to gain insights into future technology and product innovations at RA Consulting in five exciting technical presentations.
Led by Ingo Besenfelder, the DiagRA® X Viewer Pro team completed development work for the first release of this product in August. In the fourth quarter of 2022, the development team, in collaboration with the design team, prepared marketing materials to introduce the product to the right focus group. Since September 2022, this product has been available as a license in the full version.
In September the SAE OBD Symposium took place in the USA. RA Consulting used the event to present its freshly CARB certified application “Silver Snap-Tool” in the USA by Mario Hoppe and Peter Stoß. RA Consulting was able to be the first and only company certified in 2022 to sell this tool to truck owners, fleet owners and inspection centers. The software will help truck fleet operators complete California’s planned alternative submission process to the Periodic Smoke Inspection Program (PSIP, Title 13, California Code of Regulations (CCR), Section 2193(f)) and the Heavy Duty Inspection and Maintenance Program (HD I/M, Title 13, CCR, Section 2196.3(a)(3)).
The team around Thomas Kotschenreuther successfully presented the milestone presentation with participation of the project sponsor for the project “KIsSME”. The project was about a near real-time onboard detection of critical scenarios and the efficient acquisition of scenario-describing data for e.g. the testing of highly automated vehicles. The detection and classification of criticality should be enabled by adaptive AI algorithms.
In October, RA Consulting also received the award as a family-friendly company from the city of Bruchsal, highlighting the family culture with regard to the individual needs of employees.
An important goal that RA Consulting had set itself at the beginning of the year was to further expand its own order situation and consequently also to expand its staff in order to continue to ensure its customers the well-known quality of its products and software. Thus, despite the generally challenging economic and social situation, the company’s growth at the German location could be continued to more than 70 employees by the end of the year – so RA Consulting was able to welcome a total of eight new employees in 2022.
RA Consulting looks back on a successful year with new strategic developments, product innovations and successful project completions. In December, multi-year contracts with important major customers were concluded. In the Professional Services area, improvements to service processes were increasingly implemented in 2022, thus ensuring stable revenues. The area was able to successfully strengthen itself with young and highly qualified employees and fill vacant positions.
At the Christmas party, the employees of RA Consulting were informed about the economic development of the past year as well as the plans for 2023 and following. The shareholders and the management thanked the employees for their great commitment in 2022 and Armin Rupalla was allowed to announce a special payment for all employees.
