This conference paper was submitted for presentation at the NAFEMS World Congress 2025, held in Salzburg, Austria from May 19–22, 2025.

Abstract

Recently, there has been a significant increase in the demand for the systematic integration of Modeling and Simulation (M&S) in development methods as well as in release and design standards and processes. Furthermore, M&S now plays a pivotal role in driving virtualization. With this growing reliance on M&S in engineering decisions, the credibility of M&S is gaining increased importance. This covers the common understanding of credibility approaches, the assessment of the credibility of M&S, and the traceability of M&S data. At NAFEMS World Congress 2023, we presented the Robert Bosch (RB) credibility of simulation framework. This work is an extension of the previous presentation and demonstrates the progress in the framework, focusing mainly on the standardization and scalability of the approach. The RB credibility of simulation framework is designed to establish a common understanding across diverse domains and products, providing a unified generic approach. We highlight the generalized framework approach based on several existing domain-specific approaches. We describe the phases of the framework, addressing the engineering task description, defining the decision consequence, M&S risk assessment, credibility assessment, and making simulation-informed engineering decisions. For M&S risk and credibility assessment, we highlight the updated Verification, Validation and Uncertainty Quantification (VVUQ) credibility activities encapsulated in a Credibility Wheel, which now integrates M&S risk assessment into the overall credibility assessment. This approach aims for a systematic integration of M&S risk and error management into the decision-making process. The analyzed M&S risks provide orientation for the credibility target for each credibility activity. Furthermore, our experiences over the last two years demonstrate the need for tailored credibility assessments for specific application domains. In conclusion, the work outlines the challenges faced in establishing the credibility of the simulation framework and incorporating it within Bosch, a company with a diverse application domain scope. We provide insights into the future direction of the framework to establish the M&S activities as a cross-domain standard, integrating with external standards driven by Prostep smartSE.