ASPICE and Functional Safety: 8 Common Questions Answered

In Europe, it’s credibility, in the United States, it’s liability, and for everyone, it should be seen as an AI enabler. A well-defined process is an AI enabler because it provides structured, high-quality data and repeatable patterns that machine learning systems need to produce accurate and valuable results. AI can only optimize what it can observe and measure. When engineering or business workflows are clearly defined, every activity, decision, and artifact follows a predictable path that can be captured as data. That structure allows AI to recognize correlations, predict outcomes, and recommend improvements with accuracy.

A consistent process also creates clear input and output relationships across requirements, designs, tests, and validations. This enables AI to trace cause and effect, identify bottlenecks, and suggest corrective actions. Without that structure, the data becomes fragmented and unreliable, and AI applications lose value.

How is the automotive process landscape taking shape with ASPICE and Functional Safety?

The rollout of ASPICE and Functional Safety is reshaping how the global automotive industry measures trust, risk, and innovation.

For most of the world, Automotive SPICE (ASPICE) originated as a process model, a method for organizing software development around defined engineering best practices. In Europe, it has become something more powerful: a business filter.

European OEMs, particularly the German manufacturers, no longer view ASPICE as optional guidance. They use it to screen and rank suppliers. With an RFQ comes a visit from a quality professional with a laundry list of deliverables and a hands-on review of your process against the maturity model. ASPICE is now the language of supplier maturity. If you cannot demonstrate a defined capability level, you will not be invited to the table.

This shift has turned process excellence into a form of currency, a measurable way for OEMs to manage software risk and maturity across a complex global supply chain, particularly in a world where software is at the center of all development (SDV).

When does process maturity shift from a quality concern to a liability risk in ASPICE and Functional Safety?

As ASPICE and Functional Safety have matured, the nature of supplier risk has changed. What was once a quality issue can now become a liability exposure. Loet’s look at examples of how this is referenced in both ASPICE and FuSa. 
In SUP.1 (Quality Assurance), ASPICE requires that roles, responsibilities, and interfaces between the project and other parties are defined and agreed upon. This includes your role as a supplier for all aspects of the project. 

In MAN.3 (Project Management), ASPICE expects documented agreements on project responsibilities, deliverables, and schedules between all participating parties.

In ENG.1, ENG.2, and ENG.3 (System and Software Development), ASPICE requires a defined interface and information exchange between development levels, such as between system and software, or between OEM and supplier.
The process becomes a liability when you start assigning direct responsibility via a DIA in functional Safety. A Development Interface Agreement (DIA) is a documented and mutually approved agreement between two or more parties involved in the development of a safety-related item or element. It defines how the parties share responsibilities, information, and deliverables across the development lifecycle to ensure that functional Safety, quality, and process compliance objectives are met.

In a world of ever-changing software shared across various hardware platforms, communicated from embedded to cloud, and released and updated in real-time, you are part of an integrated system of systems, and you must own your part. 

Why is transforming your organization for ASPICE and Functional Safety such an expensive undertaking?

To overhaul its systems for Automotive SPICE (ASPICE) and Functional Safety (FuSa), a company must begin with a structured transformation of its engineering lifecycle, governance, and culture. The first step is to perform a comprehensive gap assessment against the target ASPICE capability levels and ISO 26262 safety requirements to identify weaknesses in processes, documentation, and tool integration. Based on these findings, the organization should define a unified development framework (ADD link to framework) that aligns process groups, including project management, configuration management, quality assurance, requirements engineering, verification and validation, and change control. Each process must have clear ownership, entry and exit criteria, measurable KPIs, and defined work products that meet ASPICE base practices while ensuring safety artifacts required by ISO 26262 are created, reviewed, and baselined. In parallel, the company should establish a governance model that connects engineering to leadership through formal reviews, milestone gates, and a safety management function empowered to make independent judgments. A Development Interface Agreement (DIA) must be established wherever development is shared across suppliers or partners to define who is responsible for safety goals, confirmation measures, and evidence generation. Supporting this framework, the organization should deploy integrated toolchains for requirements management, version control, traceability, and testing, ensuring bidirectional trace links between system, software, and hardware artifacts. Employees must be trained in ASPICE process intent, safety culture, and the rationale behind confirmation reviews, while leadership reinforces compliance as a value rather than an audit exercise. Finally, the company should institutionalize continuous improvement by conducting internal assessments with qualified assessors, closing findings with corrective action plans, and measuring both process maturity and actual engineering performance metrics, such as defect density, change turnaround, and validation coverage. The goal is not simply to pass an assessment but to create a repeatable, data-driven, and safety-compliant development system that demonstrates engineering excellence, audit readiness, and trustworthiness to OEMs and certification bodies. Let’s explore why it’s expensive. 

1. Process Engineering and Documentation
   1. Most companies have fragmented or legacy workflows. Aligning them to ASPICE base practices and ISO 26262 work products means rewriting procedures, templates, and toolchains that were never built with traceability in mind. That alone can take months.
2. Tools and Infrastructure
   1. You need integrated tools for requirements, change, configuration, and verification. Even with open-source options, exchanging data reliably can be time-consuming and require expert labor. Commercial platforms like Polarion, Codebeamer, or Jama add licensing and training costs. Any usage of Excel at this point is equivalent to using a calculator in 2025. Tools need to be integrated, and AI/Automation should be used to optimize workflows.
3. Training and Culture
   1. ASPICE and FuSa are not “checklists.” They change how engineers think. Training every project lead, developer, and tester to understand the intent of compliance requires a sustained investment in people, not just paperwork.
4. Independent Functional
   1. Functional Safety requires roles such as a safety manager, assessor, and confirmation reviewer who must be organizationally independent. Adding those layers increases the cost, but it is unavoidable for a credible certification to be achieved. Process without enforcement is just a “check the box” activity and will provide no value. Independent functions are a tool to increase enforcement.
5. Audit and Assessment Cycles
   1. To reach and maintain ASPICE Level 3 or ISO 26262 compliance, you need regular internal audits, gap closures, and external assessments by certified assessors. These cost both money and time.

Why is partnering with ASPICE and Functional Safety experts a practical solution?

1. Depth versus Breadth
   1. ASPICE and Functional Safety are deep disciplines that require years of focused experience. They involve process design, assessment methodology, and detailed evidence tracking in addition to specific technical expertise. A team that is busy building software, hardware, or vehicle systems rarely has time to maintain that level of knowledge. Working with a partner enables your engineers to focus on technical work, while the partner ensures that your processes and documents meet ASPICE and ISO 26262 standards.
2. What OEMs Actually Value
   1. OEMs do not care who builds the compliance system. They care that the process is complete, auditable, and repeatable. When you show that your development system is guided by a certified assessor or a partner with proven ASPICE and Functional Safety credentials, you gain credibility. Using a partner often makes you appear firmer, not weaker, because it demonstrates that you utilize expert support to meet global standards.
3. Scalability and Cost Control
   1. Keeping a permanent in-house process team is expensive. A partner can scale resources up during assessments or major projects and scale down when the workload is lighter. This keeps your fixed costs low and turns compliance into a predictable service cost, rather than a permanent headcount. After completing these tasks for the first time, the next step is to do them efficiently. Someone who has done it dozens of times can provide invaluable cost savings.
4. Staying Current
   1. Both ASPICE and ISO 26262 continue to evolve. The interpretation guides from TUV and Intacs are updated regularly. A specialized partner lives in that ecosystem every day and keeps your company aligned with the latest expectations without the need for constant retraining.
5. Reuse of Proven Practices
   1. Consulting and assessment firms that support multiple OEMs and Tier-1 suppliers already know what assessors expect to see. They provide prebuilt templates, process maps, and tool configurations that enable you to achieve compliance faster and with less rework. This shared knowledge saves time and cost compared with starting from scratch.
6. Strategic Focus
   1. When a partner handles compliance management, your leadership team can focus on design quality, innovation, and customer delivery, rather than documentation cycles. This shifts the organization from reacting to audits toward leading with engineering discipline.

Why is partnering with experts who offer a certified ASPICE and Functional Safety package the best solution?

A certified package is a prebuilt framework that already contains the processes, templates, toolchains, and evidence models needed to meet ASPICE and ISO 26262 expectations.

Instead of reinventing compliance for every program, the company uses this package as a baseline and customizes only those aspects that are unique to the project or customer.

The package is maintained by a small, expert arm that stays current with new standards, trains the engineering teams, and interfaces with assessors and auditors.

How does a certified ASPICE and Functional Safety package help startups gain structure and credibility without slowing development?

A startup entering the automotive or mobility industry typically has strong technical talent but lacks a well-defined process structure. Its priority is speed and proof of concept, not certification. The right strategy is to introduce a light framework that captures traceability, configuration control, and safety intent without slowing development. LHP offers a comprehensive package that can be tailored for this purpose—zero to certified in months, not years, with instant credibility.

How can Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers use certified frameworks to meet OEM expectations faster and at lower cost?

Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers are facing increasing pressure from OEMs to demonstrate ASPICE and Functional Safety maturity. Both must balance technical delivery with structured compliance while keeping costs low. The best approach is to use or partner with a certified framework that provides process packages, templates, examples, and tools to start every project from a compliant baseline. Upgrade your current process or get certified faster/cheaper than your current competition.

How can OEMs use a certified package to standardize processes, manage suppliers, and accelerate vehicle program delivery?

An OEM must manage a complex network of suppliers and ensure the overall Safety and compliance of the vehicle platform. Its main goal is to achieve consistency and oversight across all programs. The OEM should maintain a central authority that defines the company-wide ASPICE and Functional Safety framework and audits suppliers against it. The certified package at this level becomes the corporate standard, providing uniform templates, tools, and evidence models across the supply chain. It can become the driving force behind certifying the supply base for faster product release cycles.