Industrialising Software Development in Systems Integration

Compared to other disciplines, software engineering as of today is still dependent on craftsmanship of highly-skilled workers. However, with constantly increasing complexity and efforts, existing software engineering approaches appear more and more inefficient. A paradigm shift towards industrial production methods seems inevitable. Recent advances in academia and practice have lead to the availability of industrial key principles in software development as well. Specialization is represented in software product lines, standardization and systematic reuse are available with component-based development, and automation has become accessible through model-driven engineering. While each of the above is well researched in theory, only few cases of successful implementation in the industry are known. This becomes even more evident in specialized areas of software engineering such as systems integration. Today’s IT systems need to quickly adapt to new business requirements due to mergers and acquisitions and cooperations between enterprises. This certainly leads to integration efforts, i.e. joining different subsystems into a cohesive whole in order to provide new functionality. In such an environment. the application of industrial methods for software development seems even more important. Unfortunately, software development in this field is a highly complex and heterogeneous undertaking, as IT environments differ from customer to customer. In such settings, existing industrialization concepts would never break even due to one-time projects and thus insufficient economies of scale and scope. This present thesis, therefore, describes a novel approach for a more efficient implementation of prior key principles while considering the characteristics of software development for systems integration. After identifying the characteristics of the field and their affects on currently-known industrialization concepts, an organizational model for industrialized systems integration has thus been developed. It takes software product lines and adapts them in a way feasible for a systems integrator active in several business domains. The result is a three-tiered model consolidating recurring activities and reducing the efforts for individual product lines. For the implementation of component-based development, the present thesis assesses current component approaches and applies an integration metamodel to the most suitable one. This ensures a common understanding of systems integration across different product lines and thus alleviates component reuse, even across product line boundaries. The approach is furthermore aligned with the organizational model to depict in which way component-based development may be applied in industrialized systems integration. Automating software development in systems integration with model-driven engineering was found to be insufficient in its current state. The reason herefore lies in insufficient tool chains and a lack of modelling standards. As an alternative, an XML-based configuration of products within a software product line has been developed. It models a product line and its products with the help of a domain-specific language and utilizes stylesheet transformations to generate compliable artefacts. The approach has been tested for its feasibility within an exemplarily implementation following a real-world scenario. As not all aspects of industrialized systems integration could be simulated in a laboratory environment, the concept was furthermore validated during several expert interviews with industry representatives. Here, it was also possible to assess cultural and economic aspects. The thesis concludes with a detailed summary of the contributions to the field and suggests further areas of research in the context of industrialized systems integration

Supply chain management and the Romanian transition

The purpose of this paper is to perform a systemic analysis of the Supply Chain Management, and to show what are the essential aspects of such a complex process. Actually, it is an integral perspective of intra- and interorganizational management activities aiming at the optimization of all important tangible and intangible fluxes and forces acting in a multifield framework. In the same time, we are looking at the Romanian transition and show how such a new perspective can be applied to the business environment. The analysis is challenging, since Romania is in a deep change process from a centrally planned economy toward a free market economy.management, supply chain management, system analysis, transition economy.

The Managed Service Paradox

This paper examines the contrasts in the provision of managed service in the information and communication technology (ICT) sector. It highlights the polarization between infrastructure services that are growing in scale and increasingly becoming a commoditized, and customized or even one-of-a-kind service projects. The paper refers to the approaches taken by three highly innovative advanced service companies, IBM, Ericsson, and Cable & Wireless, to package and deliver ICT service on a more industrialized basis. The authors identify the six-stage process that describes these companies’ journeys to date from. They explore the challenges these companies faced on that journey as well those currently facing them as they move to a higher degree of industrialization. To address these challenges, the authors propose a model with three axes: offering development, service delivery, and go to market. The model demonstrates how the increasing industrialization of managed service requires an approach integrating all three of these dimensions. They also show that strong governance is required to address the impacts of technological evolution, marketplace dynamics, and corporate culture. The paper has formed the basis of the academic and executive education programs taught at both Imperial College and is the heart of the new service design masters program at the Royal College of Art. Because of its relevance to large industrial companies seeking to transition from an industrial offering to a service or solution led offering, the paper has been turned into a course that has been delivered to Arup, Vodafone, Finmeccanica, Telefonica, Samsung and Laing O’Rourke to date and this programme has been delivered by the authors in Korea, Taiwan, US and the UK

Recent Trends in the Research on National Innovation Systems

In this paper, we give an overview on recent developments in the research on national innovation systems (NIS). Essentially, we identify three development lines of the concept. These are policy-oriented studies that frequently combine the NIS approach with the terminology of corporate benchmarking, contributions to formalize the concept of NIS through descriptive or analytical models, and NIS studies of countries beyond the group of highly industrialized economies. It follows from the analysis of these research trends that the concept has developed in distinctive directions. In international comparisons of innovation systems, heterogeneity in the structure of the systems is only marginally taken into account, an aspect that may reduce the explanatory power of such system-level comparisons. Contrary to this, historically grown organizational and institutional structures are extensively described and considered in NIS studies of industrializing countries, a characteristic which ties up with early studies of national innovation systems.innovation, national innovation systems, comparative studies

The oportunity of group entities from the perspective of multinational corporations

Organizing traditional group entities is desirable firstly because, from a structural, managerial and operational perspective, a conformation to the global competitive structure of the environment is imposed, which means embracing some competitive decisional systems in what concerns the conscription of the possible fluctuations produced on international markets.entities group, multinational corporation, holding, opportunity, evolution

Perspectives on Mature Marshallian Industrial Districts

Industrial districts growing in various industrialized countries and regions after the golden age of mass production, in the second half of the twentieth century, have shown a re-emergence of forces of local development. The success stories, in particular those more peculiar and consistent as forms of industrial and social organization, like many Italian cases, have asked and favored the definition of apposite concepts and frames of interpretations. A strong basis of theoretical refinement was extracted from Alfred Marshall’s reflections on the role and working of industrial districts before the golden age of mass production. A well-known refinement is the model of the so-called Marshallian industrial district (MID). Sustained trajectories of success gravitating around the logic of such model have resulted in what may be intended as cases of typical mature industrial districts. They have been confronting since the end of the last century with the effects of a new wave of globalization challenges. It is argued in this paper that MID general structural and dynamic characters encompass a large set of empirical cases, in particular those of typical mature IDs reacting progressively, in terms of innovation and internationalization, to contemporary challenges and de-maturing. They find their way and combine old and new characters, still within the model. However, the MID’s borders may be trespassed as well, as the MID logic coalesces with other logics of industrial and social organization.Marshallian industrial districts; contemporary innovation and internationalization challenges

Why anthropocentric organization models don't succeed in Portugal? A cultural perspective using Hofstede's cultural dimensions

In Europe, anthropocentric organization models – an updated version of the sociotechnique approach – had their maximum expression in the Swedish model, which came to be known as “uddevalism” or “volvoism”. Several factors were presented as conditioners of this success [1], and some critical factors to the success of that organization models were pointed out for the special case of LIMS (Less Industrialized Member States), such as Portugal. Furthermore, there is some evidence that stress the lack of success of anthropocentric models in Portugal. However, in any case, it wasn’t paid much attention to the importance of culture as a booster of the introduction of new organization models. The purpose of this paper is to assess the viability of the general and exploratory hypothesis that national culture is an important factor to consider in the success of new organization models. Considering that the example which best expresses the anthropocentric approach came from Sweden, this assessment will be based on the confrontation of Portuguese and Swedish cultural characteristics using Hofstede’s cultural dimensions

The governance of regional networks in the process of European integration

The paper illustrates the model of territorial networks and it investigates the role of institutions in a bottom-up approach of economic and institutional integration aiming to tackle the negative impacts of the globalization process on the economic development. The first chapter illustrates in analytical terms the model of territorial networks and the multidimen-sional nature of the process of integration, in a regional and international setting and it contrasts it with the traditional neoclassical model of price competition and of aggregate efficiency. The second chapter illustrates the concept of organizational/institutional distance and it analyses the various forms of interregional interdependence between developed and less developed regions and it contrasts them with the neoclassical model of market integration and interregional competition. The third chapter investigates the impact of the European Union enlargement on a reform of the aims and instruments of EU regional policy and the characteristics of a regional policy appropriate to the aim of the integration of the new accessing countries in the European Union. Finally, the fourth chapter illustrates the role of institutions in the governance of the international economic relations and the lessons which may be derived from the process of European integration in order to tackle the impact of the globalization process on less developed countries. Key words: Globalization, European Integration, networks, distance, institutions Prof. Riccardo Cappellin