ROUSH Performance Engineering is a subsidiary of Roush Enterprises, Inc. and is recognized as a premier provider of high-performance products for the global automotive aftermarket. Overall, Roush Enterprises employs more than 4,000 employees in facilities worldwide. For vehicle testing, Roush Testing and Development services feature a range of automotive and power generation applications, including the RADAR FLM (Fleet Lifecycle Management) service.
The Challenge: A cloud-based service for vehicle testing at dispersed sites
When Roush proposed its new RADAR FLM service for managing the asset/vehicle lifecycle (originally On Road Vehicle Testing, or ORVT), their plan was twofold: Develop the solution for use internally, and also for commercial use at strategic sites in extreme climates around the country. New testing services would continually be developed and offered throughout the dispersed RADAR network, with the possibility of adding more sites in the future. The plan in turn spelled various critical requirements.
The first was to design and implement a virtual, cloud-based application development infrastructure for Roush engineers and each RADAR site. The second requirement was being able to centrally manage all infrastructure activities encompassing cloud instances where RADAR services were to be created and performed. Scalability, reliability and computing flexibility were all therefore infrastructure must-haves.
The Solution: A scalable Google Cloud Platform/Google Computing Engine environment
As a SaaS digital product, ClearObject’s IoT engineers partnered with the Data Analytics team at Roush to design, develop, build and provide managed services for the RADAR FLM offering. Beginning with the project’s pilot, ClearObject defined the new RADAR infrastructure, provided DevOps support, and implemented Google Cloud Platform (GCP) for the application development, data storage and data analytics capabilities Roush engineers required. To support and scale distributed RADAR locations and testing services, as well as virtual machines for compute clusters, the infrastructure also includes the Google Compute Engine (GCE) IaaS.
The Result
The RADAR project’s pilot phase enabled Roush and ClearObject to implement, test and initiate the new GCP/GCE environment as defined for RADAR FLM services development. Pilot activities additionally tested the environment for commercial use. With ClearObject providing support for the new environment after the pilot, Roush’s development team was able to successfully iterate toward their product launch for RADAR services. Now with 18 development test sites globally, these Roush Testing and Development facilities offer turnkey services including fleet lifecycle management, on-road vehicle testing, and on-site engineering and technical support.
Going Forward
ClearObject continues to perform ongoing GCP maintenance, support and configuration for the RADAR FLM solution, including support and upgrades for the software components that make up the solution. Support further includes providing a front-end system to create, modify, archive/delete user accounts, roles and audit trail information for RADAR system users.
