Case Study: Alstom cuts development time 50% and delivers defect‑free safety‑critical power‑converter code with MathWorks

Alstom Generates Production Code for Safety-Critical Power Converter Control Systems

Alstom, a global rail transport supplier, faced the challenge of designing safety‑critical, real‑time power converter and energy‑management controls for trams and trains that require sub‑millisecond latency and support complex multiprocessor architectures. Using disparate tools and hand‑coding, Alstom struggled with long development cycles, slow prototyping, poor traceability, and difficulty implementing changes—so they turned to MathWorks and its Model‑Based Design tools.

MathWorks provided a workflow using MATLAB, Simulink, Simscape Electrical, Stateflow, Simulink Coder, and Embedded Coder to model, simulate, and automatically generate production code integrated with real‑time OSs. The MathWorks solution produced readable, compact, defect‑free code, cut development time by about 50% (e.g., 2,000→1,000 hours), reduced time from design completion to first prototype from three months to under an hour, enabled projects to finish in a year instead of 18 months, and achieved TÜV certification for the Pendolino application.

Alstom

Han Geerligs

Senior Engineer