When global automotive leader Ford sought to modernize its long-serving Corporate Road Loads (CORL) system to meet evolving IT security standards and engineering demands, the company chose a cloud-ready, configurable platform for test data management — Aqira.

Aqira — supplied by Hottinger Brüel & Kjær (HBK) — streamlines search, enriches metadata and enables engineers to customize workflows and integrate analysis directly within the system — reducing manual steps and improving adaptability for future needs.

Ford’s CORL system, based on nCode Automation, had supported engineering teams with measuredSource: HBK proving ground data for over 20 years but could not meet future cloud technology and security requirements and was reaching end of life. While functional, it lacked flexibility for new data types such as CAN signals and made navigation difficult within a vast data store (over 8 terabytes) especially for users who didn’t know exactly what they were looking for.

Aqira addresses these limitations by delivering a streamlined, customizable search experience and enriched metadata, allowing engineers to efficiently retrieve data and automate analysis. This positions Ford to unlock greater insights and efficiencies as part of its next-generation engineering workflows.

According to Dan Clatterbuck, CAE/TEST engineer at Ford Motor Company, “Aqira has been an extremely positive experience for our engineering teams. It’s a solution built by engineers, for engineers, allowing us to shape the system to fit our workflows and reducing our reliance on IT support.”