In the area of car body systems development, automotive companies are realizing the value of an end-to-end, integrated lifecycle approach to the overall process, from vehicle concept, through engineering development and production. The sequential approach to vehicle development — where body styling, structural engineering and development, and manufacturing processes are separate functional disciplines as well as organizations that hand off each step of the process — is giving way to a more integrated approach. Concurrent engineering methods have helped to merge concept, development and manufacturing processes over the years, but the vision going forward is a systems-driven approach for automotive body engineering and manufacturing. The systems-driven approach brings all aspects of car design together in a holistic fashion and makes it easy to trace requirements — whether customer, regulatory, legal, or others — throughout the design process with constant validation.