Managed Evolution of Automotive Software Product Line Architectures: A Systematic Literature Study

The rapidly growing number of software-based features in the automotive domain as well as the special requirements in this domain ask for dedicated engineering approaches, models, and processes. Nowadays, software development in the automotive sector is generally developed as product line development, in which major parts of the software are kept adaptable in order to enable reusability of the software in different vehicle variants. In addition, reuse also plays an important role in the development of new vehicle generations in order to reduce development costs. Today, a high number of methods and techniques exist to support the product line driven development of software in the automotive sector. However, these approaches generally consider only partial aspects of development. In this paper, we present an in-depth literature study based on a conceptual model of artifacts and activities for the managed evolution of automotive software product line architectures. We are interested in the coverage of the particular aspects of the conceptual model and, thus, the fields covered in current research and research gaps, respectively. Furthermore, we aim to identify the methods and techniques used to implement automotive software product lines in general, and their usage scope in particular. As a result, this in-depth review reveals that none of the studies represent a holistic approach for the managed evolution of automotive software product lines. In addition, approaches from agile software development are of growing interest in this field

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

Rapid development of ICT business services by business engineers independent of computer scientists

Current software development requires computer scientists to create and to adapt services to new or changing needs. In addition development and maintenance of software is time and cost intensive. Customizing of standard software is laborious. Software engineering research approaches as Domain Engineering, Model Driven Software Engineering and Product Line Engineering try to increase the abstraction level of the specification of the models to reduce the required time and money to build applications and services but they still demand the implementation by computer scientists. In two projects supported by the CTI (Commission for Technology and Innovation of the Swiss Confederation) we analysed how to achieve a higher level of abstraction and how to specify database-centric business services in a manner business engineers are able to create and to adapt services completely by themselves. Besides the methodology to specify these services (data structure, business rules, etc.), methods and technologies to hide all technical aspects (infrastructure, software architecture, versioning etc.) entirely from the business engineer had to be developed. In this paper an according graphical notation to specify services or complete applications is discussed

Variability Handling in Educational Context

Today there are many different forms of educational activities present, e.g., traditional lecturing, e-learning, blended learning and living labs. Also, the audience becomes more and more international and heterogeneous in terms of background knowledge of students, their educational purposes, capabilities and expectations. This introduces a high level of variability in educational settings and requires new methods and tools for managing this variability. Customized application of feature models, known in software product line management, is one possible solution applicable for variability handling in educational context. This paper proposes the development of a feature model as the method for variability handling

Defining and validating a multimodel approach for product architecture derivation and improvement

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-41533-3_24Software architectures are the key to achieving the non-functional requirements (NFRs) in any software project. In software product line (SPL) development, it is crucial to identify whether the NFRs for a specific product can be attained with the built-in architectural variation mechanisms of the product line architecture, or whether additional architectural transformations are required. This paper presents a multimodel approach for quality-driven product architecture derivation and improvement (QuaDAI). A controlled experiment is also presented with the objective of comparing the effectiveness, efficiency, perceived ease of use, intention to use and perceived usefulness with regard to participants using QuaDAI as opposed to the Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method (ATAM). The results show that QuaDAI is more efficient and perceived as easier to use than ATAM, from the perspective of novice software architecture evaluators. However, the other variables were not found to be statistically significant. Further replications are needed to obtain more conclusive results.This research is supported by the MULTIPLE project (MICINN TIN2009-13838) and the Vali+D fellowship program (ACIF/2011/235).González Huerta, J.; Insfrán Pelozo, CE.; Abrahao Gonzales, SM. (2013). Defining and validating a multimodel approach for product architecture derivation and improvement. En Model-Driven Engineering Languages and Systems. Springer. 388-404. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-41533-3_24S388404Ali-Babar, M., Lago, P., Van Deursen, A.: Empirical research in software architecture: opportunities, challenges, and approaches. Empirical Software Engineering 16(5), 539–543 (2011)Ali-Babar, M., Zhu, L., Jeffery, R.: A Framework for Classifying and Comparing Software Architecture Evaluation Methods. In: 15th Australian Software Engineering Conference, Melbourne, Australia, pp. 309–318 (2004)Basili, V.R., Rombach, H.D.: The TAME project: towards improvement-oriented software environments. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 14(6), 758–773 (1988)Barkmeyer, E.J., Feeney, A.B., Denno, P., Flater, D.W., Libes, D.E., Steves, M.P., Wallace, E.K.: Concepts for Automating Systems Integration NISTIR 6928. National Institute of Standards and Technology, U.S. Dept. of Commerce (2003)Bosch, J.: Design and Use of Software Architectures. Adopting and Evolving Product-Line Approach. Addison-Wesley, Harlow (2000)Botterweck, G., O’Brien, L., Thiel, S.: Model-driven derivation of product architectures. In: 22th Int. Conf. on Automated Software Engineering, New York, USA, pp. 469–472 (2007)Buschmann, F., Meunier, R., Rohnert, H., Sommerlad, P., Stal, M.: Pattern-Oriented software architecture, vol. 1: A System of Patterns. Wiley (1996)Cabello, M.E., Ramos, I., Gómez, A., Limón, R.: Baseline-Oriented Modeling: An MDA Approach Based on Software Product Lines for the Expert Systems Development. In: 1st Asia Conference on Intelligent Information and Database Systems, Vietnam (2009)Carifio, J., Perla, R.J.: Ten Common Misunderstandings, Misconceptions, Persistent Myths and Urban Legends about Likert Scales and Likert Response Formats and their Antidotes. Journal of Social Sciences 3(3), 106–116 (2007)Clements, P., Northrop, L.: Software Product Lines: Practices and Patterns. Addison-Wesley, Boston (2007)Czarnecki, K., Kim, C.H.: Cardinality-based feature modeling and constraints: A progress report. In: Int. Workshop on Software Factories, San Diego-CA (2005)Datorro, J.: Convex Optimization & Euclidean Distance Geometry. Meboo Publishing (2005)Davis, F.D.: Perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and user acceptance of information technology. MIS Quarterly 13(3), 319–340 (1989)Douglass, B.P.: Real-Time Design Patterns: Robust Scalable Architecture for Real-Time Systems. Addison-Wesley, Boston (2002)Feiler, P.H., Gluch, D.P., Hudak, J.: The Architecture Analysis & Design Language (AADL): An Introduction. Tech. Report CMU/SEI-2006-TN-011. SEI, Carnegie Mellon University (2006)Gómez, A., Ramos, I.: Cardinality-based feature modeling and model-driven engineering: Fitting them together. In: 4th Int. Workshop on Variability Modeling of Software Intensive Systems, Linz, Austria (2010)Gonzalez-Huerta, J., Insfran, E., Abrahao, S.: A Multimodel for Integrating Quality Assessment in Model-Driven Engineering. In: 8th International Conference on the Quality of Information and Communications Technology (QUATIC 2012), Lisbon, Portugal, September 3-6 (2012)Gonzalez-Huerta, J., Insfran, E., Abrahao, S., McGregor, J.D.: Non-functional Requirements in Model-Driven Software Product Line Engineering. In: 4th Int. Workshop on Non-functional System Properties in Domain Specific Modeling Languages, Insbruck, Austria (2012)Guana, V., Correal, V.: Variability quality evaluation on component-based software product lines. In: 15th Int. Software Product Line Conference, Munich, Germany, vol. 2, pp. 19.1–19.8 (2011)Insfrán, E., Abrahão, S., González-Huerta, J., McGregor, J.D., Ramos, I.: A Multimodeling Approach for Quality-Driven Architecture Derivation. In: 21st Int. Conf. on Information Systems Development (ISD 2012), Prato, Italy (2012)ISO/IEC 25000:2005, Software Engineering. Software product Quality Requirements and Evaluation SQuaRE (2005)Kazman, R., Klein, M., Clements, P.: ATAM: Method for Architecture Evaluation (CMU/SEI-2000-TR-004, ADA382629). Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh (2000), http://www.sei.cmu.edu/publications/documents/00.reports/00tr004.htmlKim, T., Ko, I., Kang, S., Lee, D.: Extending ATAM to assess product line architecture. In: 8th IEEE Int. Conference on Computer and Information Technology, Sydney, Australia, pp. 790–797 (2008)Kitchenham, B.A., Pfleeger, S.L., Hoaglin, D.C., Rosenber, J.: Preliminary Guidelines for Empirical Research in Software Engineering. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 28(8) (2002)Kruchten, P.B.: The Rational Unified Process: An Introduction. Addison-Wesley (1999)Martensson, F.: Software Architecture Quality Evaluation. Approaches in an Industrial Context. Ph. D. thesis, Blekinge Institute of Technology, Karlskrona, Sweden (2006)Maxwell, K.: Applied Statistics for Software Managers. Software Quality Institute Series. Prentice-Hall (2002)Olumofin, F.G., Mišic, V.B.: A holistic architecture assessment method for software product lines. Information and Software Technology 49, 309–323 (2007)Perovich, D., Rossel, P.O., Bastarrica, M.C.: Feature model to product architectures: Applying MDE to Software Product Lines. In: IEEE/IFIP & European Conference on Software Architecture, Helsinki, Findland, pp. 201–210 (2009)Robertson, S., Robertson, J.: Mastering the requirements process. ACM Press, New York (1999)Roos-Frantz, F., Benavides, D., Ruiz-Cortés, A., Heuer, A., Lauenroth, K.: Quality-aware analysis in product line engineering with the orthogonal variability model. Software Quality Journal (2011), doi:10.1007/s11219-011-9156-5Saaty, T.L.: The Analytical Hierarchical Process. 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A systematic review of quality attributes and measures for software product lines

[EN] It is widely accepted that software measures provide an appropriate mechanism for understanding, monitoring, controlling, and predicting the quality of software development projects. In software product lines (SPL), quality is even more important than in a single software product since, owing to systematic reuse, a fault or an inadequate design decision could be propagated to several products in the family. Over the last few years, a great number of quality attributes and measures for assessing the quality of SPL have been reported in literature. However, no studies summarizing the current knowledge about them exist. This paper presents a systematic literature review with the objective of identifying and interpreting all the available studies from 1996 to 2010 that present quality attributes and/or measures for SPL. These attributes and measures have been classified using a set of criteria that includes the life cycle phase in which the measures are applied; the corresponding quality characteristics; their support for specific SPL characteristics (e. g., variability, compositionality); the procedure used to validate the measures, etc. We found 165 measures related to 97 different quality attributes. The results of the review indicated that 92% of the measures evaluate attributes that are related to maintainability. In addition, 67% of the measures are used during the design phase of Domain Engineering, and 56% are applied to evaluate the product line architecture. However, only 25% of them have been empirically validated. In conclusion, the results provide a global vision of the state of the research within this area in order to help researchers in detecting weaknesses, directing research efforts, and identifying new research lines. In particular, there is a need for new measures with which to evaluate both the quality of the artifacts produced during the entire SPL life cycle and other quality characteristics. There is also a need for more validation (both theoretical and empirical) of existing measures. In addition, our results may be useful as a reference guide for practitioners to assist them in the selection or the adaptation of existing measures for evaluating their software product lines. © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.This research has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under the MULTIPLE (Multimodeling Approach For Quality-Aware Software Product Lines) project with ref. TIN2009-13838.Montagud Gregori, S.; Abrahao Gonzales, SM.; Insfrán Pelozo, CE. (2012). A systematic review of quality attributes and measures for software product lines. Software Quality Journal. 20(3-4):425-486. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11219-011-9146-7S425486203-4Abdelmoez, W., Nassar, D. M., Shereschevsky, M., Gradetsky, N., Gunnalan, R., Ammar, H. H., et al. (2004). Error propagation in software architectures. In 10th international symposium on software metrics (METRICS), Chicago, Illinois, USA.Ajila, S. A., & Dumitrescu, R. T. (2007). Experimental use of code delta, code churn, and rate of change to understand software product line evolution. Journal of Systems and Software, 80, 74–91.Aldekoa, G., Trujillo, S., Sagardui, G., & Díaz, O. (2006). Experience measuring maintainability in software product lines. In XV Jornadas de Ingeniería del Software y Bases de Datos (JISBD). Barcelona.Aldekoa, G., Trujillo, S., Sagardui, G., & Díaz, O. (2008). Quantifying maintanibility in feature oriented product lines, Athens, Greece, pp. 243–247.Alves de Oliveira Junior, E., Gimenes, I. M. S., & Maldonado, J. C. (2008). A metric suite to support software product line architecture evaluation. In XXXIV Conferencia Latinamericana de Informática (CLEI), Santa Fé, Argentina, pp. 489–498.Alves, V., Niu, N., Alves, C., & Valença, G. (2010). Requirements engineering for software product lines: A systematic literature review. Information & Software Technology, 52(8), 806–820.Bosch, J. (2000). Design and use of software architectures: Adopting and evolving a product line approach. USA: ACM Press/Addison-Wesley Publishing Co.Briand, L. C., Differing, C. M., & Rombach, D. (1996a). Practical guidelines for measurement-based process improvement. Software Process-Improvement and Practice, 2, 253–280.Briand, L. C., Morasca, S., & Basili, V. R. (1996b). Property based software engineering measurement. IEEE Transactions on Software Eng., 22(1), 68–86.Calero, C., Ruiz, J., & Piattini, M. (2005). Classifying web metrics using the web quality model. Online Information Review, 29(3): 227–248.Chen, L., Ali Babar, M., & Ali, N. (2009). Variability management in software product lines: A systematic review. In 13th international software product lines conferences (SPLC), San Francisco, USA.Clements, P., & Northrop, L. (2002). Software product lines. 2003. Software product lines practices and patterns. Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley.Crnkovic, I., & Larsson, M. (2004). Classification of quality attributes for predictability in component-based systems. Journal of Econometrics, pp. 231–250.Conference Rankings of Computing Research and Education Association of Australasia (CORE). (2010). Available in http://core.edu.au/index.php/categories/conference%20rankings/1 .Davis, A., Dieste, Ó., Hickey, A., Juristo, N., & Moreno, A. M. (2006). Effectiveness of requirements elicitation techniques: Empirical results derived from a systematic review. In 14th IEEE international conference requirements engineering, pp. 179–188.de Souza Filho, E. D., de Oliveira Cavalcanti, R., Neiva, D. F. S., Oliveira, T. H. B., Barachisio Lisboa, L., de Almeida E. S., & de Lemos Meira, S. R. (2008). Evaluating domain design approaches using systematic review. In 2nd European conference on software architecture, Cyprus, pp. 50–65.Ejiogu, L. (1991). Software engineering with formal metrics. QED Publishing.Engström, E., & Runeson, P. (2011). Software product line testing—A systematic mapping study. Information & Software Technology, 53(1), 2–13.Etxeberria, L., Sagarui, G., & Belategi, L. (2008). Quality aware software product line engineering. Journal of the Brazilian Computer Society, 14(1), Campinas Mar.Ganesan, D., Knodel, J., Kolb, R., Haury, U., & Meier, G. (2007). Comparing costs and benefits of different test strategies for a software product line: A study from Testo AG. In 11th international software product line conference, Kyoto, Japan, pp. 74–83, September 2007.Gómez, O., Oktaba, H., Piattini, M., & García, F. (2006). 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In 14th International conference on software engineering and knowledge engineering, Ischia, Italy, pp. 249–254.Journal Citation Reports of Thomson Reuters. (2010). Available in http://thomsonreuters.com/products_services/science/science_products/a-z/journal_citation_reports/ .Khurum, M., & Gorschek, T. (2009). A systematic review of domain analysis solutions for product lines. The Journal of Systems and Software.Kim, T., Ko, I. Y., Kang, S. W., & Lee, D. H. (2008). Extending ATAM to assess product line architecture. In 8th IEEE international conference on computer and information technology, pp. 790–797.Kitchenham, B. (2007). Guidelines for performing systematic literature reviews in software engineering. Version 2.3, EBSE Technical Report, Keele University, UK.Kitchenham, B., Pfleeger, S., & Fenton, N. (1995). Towards a framework for software measurement validation. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 21(12).Landis, J. R., & Koch, G. G. (1977). 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"Meniscus" The Eye Diagnostic Integrated Facility

Meniscus, an eye diagnostic product, using semi automatic system. Design to answer eye diagnostic problem, many optician complaint of impractical process of manual diagnostic product, mean while patient also complaint of low accuracy result of automatic system. It indicated that there are some opportunity in blue ocean area. The design result must meet these criteria : practical, accuracy, ergonomic. By doing observations, authors try to create a new product development in new product line, in semi-automatic system. Meniscus is a tool that used FluidFocus Lens replacement lens mechanism. Replacement lens control mechanism is set by the operator remotely by mikrocontroler, integrated in personal computers that have been equipped with computer applications test eye chart software. These replacement methods, which still need using optician effort, are the keyword of ”semi” in automatic system means. But, it doesnt mean Meniscus bury the accuracy result, FluidFocus Lens will quarantee the current accuracy result problem. Meniscus is a whole process in a product design. But the different is the methods, the starting point is not from the problem identification, but from the innovative technology finding then try to find idea in product apllication. Beside the design & technology, ergonomy and aesthetic still the main design consideration of this product. The image design are taken from keywords “simple-futuristic” style. The design process include sketch-rendering-modelling-prototyping. This paper is an improvement of previous paper with same subject. The main concern now is to describe the adjustable frame design, so Menicus can be use for any age user with many kind face characteristics. Authors hope that these early research can be continue and produce a real product

Variability Management in Software Product Lines Online Learning Applications

The process of learning and teaching online learning has undergone many changes in line with technological developments. Education institutions have begun introducing new methods of learning this. However, it needs a huge amount of labor intensive to produce and maintain educational technologies due to its huge size (literacy, vocational education, school education, engineering and medical education) and huge variants (language, dialect). With the growing demand and at the same time would like to reduce the factor of cost, time and effort is long, then the need for an effective solution allowing rapid system development. A Software Product Line (SPL) approach is one of the best methods that can be used to develop an educational software family. This research focuses on core asset by recognizing and representing variability in variability management. The study employed two phases of activities in data gathering, there are filtering out data from secondary sources which detail out the features of e-learning and constructivist learning environment of each Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). Second phase involved the use of expert interviews to determine the features of each higher institution elearning and identify Primitive Requirement of Malaysian Higher Education online learning. Commonality and Variability Analysis (CV Analysis) method has been used as identification of commonality and variability. This analysis is to develop a feature model which further helps in visual representation variants requirements and enhance reusability in the context of product line approaches. As a result, there are 20 Primitive Requirements (PR) has been identified and clearly divided into two categories, common and optional. The frequency in each application of online learning is used to determine whether the PR is reusable. The identification and representation will increase the potential for reuse and help in publishing the specific requirements of the application in the development of the product line

Automaatio-ohjelmistojen kehittäminen ja versionhallinta: Tapaustutkimus SRF-tuotantoprosessista

Automaatio-ohjelmistojen kompleksisuus on muodostunut ongelmaksi muun muassa prosessiteollisuudessa ja koneenvalmistuksessa. Ohjelmistojen kompleksisuuden ja kustannusten kasvaessa ohjelmistojen kehitykseen ja ylläpitoon tulee kiinnittää entistä enemmän huomiota. Ohjelmistojen kehitystä ja ylläpitoa tukevia menetelmiä ovat esimerkiksi konfiguraation- ja versionhallinta sekä mallipohjainen ja modulaarinen suunnittelu. Nämä systemaattisen ohjelmistokehityksen menetelmät eivät kuitenkaan ole vakiintuneita toimintatapoja pienissä ja keskisuurissa yrityksissä Tutkimuksen tavoitteena on selvittää, miten edellä mainitut menetelmät tukevat ohjelmistokehitystä ja liiketoimintaa, erityisesti keskisuurissa teollisuusyrityksissä. Tutkimusstrategiaksi on valittu yksittäinen tapaustutkimus. Tutkimuksen kohteena olevalle tuotantolinjalle etsitään kuvailutapa, jossa osasysteemien väliset rajapinnat kuvataan materiaalin ja informaation virtauksena. Rajapintasopimukset mahdollistavat tuotantolinjan modulaarisen rakenteen. Tällöin muutokset yhdessä osasysteemissä eivät vaikuta muihin osasysteemeihin, jos rajapinnat säilyvät ennallaan. Kuvailutavan käyttötarkoituksena on tukea simulaattorikehitystä ja konfiguraationhallintaa. Simulaatioita voidaan hyödyntää ohjelmistojen kehittämisessä ja testaamisessa. Versionhallinnalle määritetään tutkimuksessa selkeät tavoitteet ja vaatimukset sekä tutkitun yrityksen tarpeisiin soveltuva työkalu. Tutkimuksessa esitetään lähestymistapa, jossa ohjelmistojen ja simulointimallien versionhallinta integroidaan osaksi tuotantolinjalle määriteltyä tuotetietorakennetta. Tuotantolinjan tuotetieto pyritään kuvailemaan kokonaisvaltaisesti integroidulla tuotetietomallilla. Tuotetiedon kuvailu sisältää sekä tuotantolinjan ohjelmiston että siihen liittyvän laitteiston. Tällä hetkellä yrityksen tuottamat automaatio-ohjelmistot ovat kuitenkin ei-modulaarisia. Tutkimuksessa esitetään lähestymistapa ohjelmistojen modulaarisen rakenteen määrittelemiseksi ja ohjelmistojen modulaarisointiin liittyvän siirtymästrategian luomiseksi. Ohjelmistomoduulien kehittämiseen vaadittavan investoinnin kannattavuutta arvioidaan takaisinmaksuaikaan perustuvalla menetelmällä. Lisäksi tuodaan esille investoinnin kustannusten ja takaisinmaksuajan arviointiin liittyviä epävarmuustekijöitä. Modulaaristen ohjelmistojen kehittämisen tueksi ehdotetaan myös mallipohjaisen suunnitteluprosessin käyttöönottoa. Tutkimuksessa tuodaan esiin mallipohjaisen suunnittelun hyödyntämiseen liittyviä etuja ja haasteita. Tunnistettuja etuja ovat kehitettävien ohjelmistojen jatkuva testaaminen, toimintojen dokumentoinnin helppous ja mallien hyödyntäminen sidosryhmien (kuten alihankkijat) välisessä kommunikoinnissa. Mallipohjaisten menetelmien hyödyntämisen haasteina taas ovat standardoidun kehitysalustan puuttuminen sekä laite- ja laitosvarianttien suuri määrä. Lisäksi uusien ohjelmistokehitysmenetelmien käyttöönottaminen vaatii tietotaidon ja resurssien lisäämistä organisaation sisällä.The complexity of automation software has become a real problem in the process and ma-chine industries. As the complexity and cost of software increase, more attention must be paid to the development and maintenance of software. Methods supporting the development and maintenance of software are configuration management and version control as well as model-based and modular design. However, the systematic software development methods in question have not been widely adapted by small and medium sized enterprises. The objective of this study is to gain more information about utilization of the above-mentioned methods, especially in the medium sized industrial enterprises. An individual case study has been chosen as a research strategy. The subject of the case study is a single production line. Functional decomposition method is used to analyse the production line. Interfaces between the subsystems of the production line are described as material and information flows. The interface agreements are used to facilitate the modular structure of the production line. Modularity principle means that changes in one subsystem will not affect to other subsystems if the interfaces remain unchanged. Modular structure of the production line supports simulator development and configuration management. The simulations can be utilized in the development and testing of software. Objectives and requirements as well as suitable tools for the version control are determined in this study. Scope of the version control is limited to software and simulation models related to the production line. Approach used for the version control is to describe the production line with an integrated product data model. The product data consists of software and hardware of the production line. In the current situation, the automation software implementations produced by the studied company are non-modular. An approach to define the modular structure of software is represented in this study as well as creation of the transition strategy related to the modularization of software. The transition process requires investment for the development of software modules. A method based on the payback period is used to evaluate the profitability of the investment. Furthermore, factors of uncertainty related to the cost and payback period of the investment are presented in this study. Utilization of model-based design process also is proposed to support the development of modular software. Advantages and challenges related to the model-based design methods are presented in the study. The identified advantages are continuous testing of the software, reducing the effort related to documentation of functionalities and improvements in communication between the interest groups (such as the subcontractors) by utilizing the models. The challenges are the lack of the standardized development platform as well as the large number of ma-chine variants and power plant variants. Furthermore, introduction of new software development methodologies requires increased level of know-how and resources inside the organisation

Modular Design Architecture: Accelerating Product Design Processes through Modularity

Finding the line between time investment in pre-designing product architecture instead of creating it only when needed is complex; if the foundation is rashly defined, it results in a high chance of failure. On the other hand, strict planning means time away from production, and thus, the postponement of a product launch. Moreover, a restricted foundation can make responding to future changes challenging. Modular design architecture, together with modular product architecture, enables companies to design, iterate, and push their products faster to the markets. Since the building blocks for agile product design and development are readily available, approximately all robust products are modular nowadays. This thesis addresses and inspects how modular design architecture can accelerate product design and development processes when creating new web-based products. The researched literature presents insights and theoretical frameworks regarding modularity, software development, and product design. It additionally addresses teamwork and best practices found in product development. The research was conducted based on the grounded theory methodology. Its primary data collection method was benchmarking, and it applied the grounded theory data coding methods to scrutinize and categorize the acquired data. This thesis coins a novel framework based on the research findings to address interrelationships amidst various definitions, elements, and categories found within modular design architectures.Täydellisen linjan löytäminen siinä, kuinka paljon aikaa tulisi investoida tuotearkkitehtuurin suunnitteluun etukäteen sen sijaan, että sitä luotaisiin vain tarvittaessa, on hankalaa; jos tuotteen pohjatyö määritetään liian harkitsemattomasti, se luo suuremman riskin epäonnistumiseen. Toisaalta, liian yksityiskohtainen suunnittelu vie aikaa pois tuotannosta, lykäten tuotteen lanseerausta. Tämän lisäksi liian rajoitettu tuotearkkitehtuuri voi tehdä reagoimisen tuleviin muutoksiin haastaviksi. Modulaarinen suunnitteluarkkitehtuuri yhdessä modulaarisen tuotearkkitehtuurin kanssa mahdollistaa yritysten suunnitella, iteroida ja lanseerata nopeammin tuotteitaan markkinoille. Koska kaikki ketterän tuotesuunnittelun ja kehityksen vaadittavat osa-alueet ovat jo saatavilla, ovat melkein kaikki pitkälle kehitetyt tuotteet modulaarisia. Tässä työssä tarkastellaan, kuinka modulaarinen suunnittelu- arkkitehtuuri voi nopeuttaa tuotesuunnittelu- ja kehitysprosesseja luotaessa uusia verkkopohjaisia tuotteita. Työssä hyödynnetty kirjallisuus tarjoaa näkemyksiä ja teoreettisia viitekehyksiä modulaarisuudesta, ohjelmistokehityksestä ja tuotesuunnittelusta. Edellä mainittujen lisäksi se käsittelee myös ryhmätyötä ja tuotekehityksen parhaita käytäntöjä. Tutkimus suoritettiin grounded theory -metodologian pohjalta. Sen ensisijainen tiedonkeruumenetelmä oli vertailuanalyysi, ja se hyödynsi grounded theory:n eri koodausmenetelmiä hankitun tiedon tarkastelemiseen ja luokitteluun. Tämä tutkimus luo tutkimustuloksien pohjalta uuden viitekehyksen tarkastelemaan modulaarisen suunnitteluarkkitehtuurin eri määritelmien, elementtien ja luokkien keskinäisiä vuorovaikutussuhteita ja -tasoja