Ivica Crnkovic

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Industrial IT - its Importance for Education and
Research

• Ivica Crnkovic
• Mälardalen University
• Department of Computer Engineering
• ivica.crnkovic_at_mdh.se

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Ivica Crnkovic

• Senior Lecturer at Mälardalens Högskola, IDT
• Computer Science Laboratory leader
• Many years at ABB
• Background Electrical Engineer and Theoretical
  Physicist
• Main interests
• Research - Software Engineering
• Component-based Software Engineering
• Software Configuration Management
• Software Development Processes
• Teaching
• People organization

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Industrial IT, Education and Research

• Industrial IT
• Evolution
• State of the Art, Trends
• Main Requirements Today and in the Nearest
  Future
• Education
• Education relevance
• Relation to Industrial IT
• Research
• Fundamental and applied research
• Relation to Industrial IT
• Summary

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A little bit of history - changes in the society
- 20th century

• 1900 - Europe (Sweden) 80 farmers
• Industry gaining ground
• Dramatic changes in society
• Sweden Today 4 of the population are farmers
• Nearest futureIT society

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Industrial IT

• Example Industrial Automation
• Seventies and before Electrical and mechanical
  control devices
• Seventies . Electronics
• Eighties . Computerization
• Control Systems, Operator Stations
• Focus on
• Development - hardware, software
• Hard RTOS, communication, development tools

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Industrial IT evolution - nineties

• Growing complexity
• Standard platform solutions, product variants
• Using standard components (hardware software)
• Open systems - combining standard tools with
  proprietary software
• Focus on
• Integration, architecture, development
  environment (configuration management),
  middleware
• contacts with software and hardware providers

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Example Product - ABB Advant Network Topology
MES System
MES System
MES or ERPServer
Plant Network
AdvantOperator Station Windows NT
AdvantOperator Station Unix
AdvantEnterprise Historian Windows NT
AdvantOperator Station Windows NT
Control Network
Advant Controller 450orAdvant Controller 460
Advant Controller 410
Fieldbus
S800 I/O
S800 I/O
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Industrial IT - the present situation

• Challenges
• Time to Market
• efficiency - 10 times!
• Integration with heterogeneous systems
• Flexibility
• Further tuning of processes
• Bulk of information
• New (intelligent, adaptive) way of data and
  process presentation
• Online configurations
• Open Systems

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How to meet the challenges?

• DO NOT REEVENT THE WHEEL IN EVERY NEW PROJECT!
• REUSE SOFTWARE
• USE STANDARD SOLUTIONS
• SPECIALIZE

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Industrial IT - new focus

• REUSE COMPONENTS!
• COTS (Commercial off the Shelf)

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The component dream (ICSE 1999 - Butler Lampson )

• A library of tested, documented components
• To build your system, you take down a couple of
  dozen components and glue them together.

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Industrial IT - new focus

• Integration - Vertical and horizontal

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Example of an integration

• OPC (OLE for Process Control)
• industry standard
• for communication between components in field
  devices, automation equipment and business
  applications
• generic driver
• data access
• historical data access
• event alarm handling

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Why OPC is needed?
Display Application
Trend Application
Report Application
Software Driver
Software Driver
Software Driver
Software Driver
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How does OPC Solve the Problem?
Display Application
Trend Application
Report Application
OPC
OPC
OPC
OPC
OPC
OPC
OPC
Software Driver
Software Driver
Software Driver
Software Driver
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Integration Example ABB Aspect Objects
Planning Scheduling
Business Systems
Plant Engineering
Operations
Asset Lifecycle
Process Engineering
Asset Management
Design
Multiple Aspects
Maintenance
Production
Operations
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Industrial IT - the nearest future

• Total globalization of information
• Access from everywhere to everywhere
• Problem with security
• Dynamic configuration of systems
• Integration of safety critical systems with
  non-critical safety systems
• Integration of hard real time systems with soft
  or non-real time systems
• Standardization - on component level, on system
  level

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What qualifications are needed?

• Multi disciplinary knowledge
• Marketing issues, customer orientation
• Finding proper (existing) solutions, rather than
  be an expert in algorithms
• Just in time competence

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Markus Bayegan , ABB Head of RD

• ABB CBSE Symposium, Baden
  2000-08

• ABB is under a process of total change
• Core business is changed
• from generations, power plants, to automation,
  information technology (IT)
• Changes in way of working
• No big factories, but distributed development,
  cooperation
• New customers
• From huge state-owned companies to many both
  small and big - flexible private

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Education and Industrial IT
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Education and Industrial IT

• Does industry need education at all?
• Is it enough with fast-training?
• for just in time competence
• What does academia offer?
• What does industry (industrial IT) need?
• What can we do?

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Examples from the real-life

• 1 - a lessons learned example
• In a company.
• A standing problem with a product
• Finally after several years of struggling, the
  source code has examined
• Result.
• 2 - A best practice example
• A Case at Mälardalen University...

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Education - an lessons learned example

• Source code - a final-state machine

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Education - A good example

• Bs.C Thesis
• Software License management
• encryption algorithms

One student was a former locksmith! A wonderful
example of competence improvement!
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Education

• What do we (academia) offer to the students?

mathematics

• What the industry is looking for?

Real-timesystem
Computer Languages C, C, Functional Languages
ASP
TCP/IP
Can you COM, COM ??
.NET, C, XML,
Rose
Algorithms and Structures
SoftwareEngineering
J2EE
Do you play basket?
Compilersgraphics
OS Communication
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Experience - students characteristics

• Have good fundamentals
• Quickly learn new languages
• Take Initiative
• Actively participate in teamwork
• New technologies might be an obstacle
• No feeling for long-term goals, maintainability,
  etc.
• Difficulty in designing systems and writing
  reusable code
• No experience in building complex systems

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Challenges

• Do we give students that what they need (or
  want)?
• Do we succeed cover short-term needs and long
  term investment?
• Requirements
• Keep/improve the quality level
• Keep/improve building long-term knowledge
• Learn the students how to learn
• Give the students up-to-date knowledge
• Learn the students how to cooperate

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Meet to the Challenges!

• Keep/improve the quality level
• Use modern and efficient tools (not only
  freeware, but good things!)
• Keep/improve building long-term knowledge
• Learn to think in abstract forms!
• Learn how to generalize!
• Give the students up-to-date knowledge (at least
  elements) Learn the students how to cooperate
• Cooperation with Industry
• Give more active roles to students (but guide
  them, mind the quality!)
• Introduce new courses closer to industry needs

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Industrial IT profile

• Component-based development
• Architectural issues (how to design systems from
  components)
• MMI (HCI, HMI, GUI)
• Distributed systems
• Web, Internet
• Real-time systems, embedded systemsintegrated
  into soft- and non real-time systems
• Software Engineering
• Several courses on Ph.D, D-level
• Several basic courses on B, C level
• Courses, packages of courses for and with
  Industrial people

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Research and Industrial IT
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SCIENCE and RESEARCH

• Do we need it at all?
• If you think something to do, it is already done!
• We do not have time and money spend on it.
• Has research anything to do with industry?
• The real results of research can be used after
  100-200 years? Why should we pay for that?
• Has industry anything to do with research?
• Industry must be efficient
• Industry has short-time goals
• You can acquire knowledge and technology without
  research

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Example 1

• Maxwell
• electromagnetic theory
• What have Maxwells equations to do with life at
  Maxwells time?
• What would would political authorities said about
  it?

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Example 2

• Applied research
• Archimedes' Law of Buoyancy
• direct impact on everyday life

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Science and Research and Industry
time
now
-2000
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Time scale for Industry, Time scale for Reseach
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Research and Industrial IT

• Scope
• Follow the trends
• Working on issues that look promising now but
  still are not solved
• Perspective 2 -10 years
• Component-based Development
• Integration and Information Exchange
• Utilizing standard and de-facto standard
  technologies
• Architectural issues
• relation to real-time and embedded systems
• Human-machine interface
• Software engineering - successful processes

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How?
ABB Research Development
Local research groups
Industrial ITResearch Group
Otherindustrial companies
Other research groups
Educationprogram
Researchprogram
Small companies
Common projects papers workshops and
conferences PhD courses
Common projects Common courses Courses for
industry people Conferences
Industrialassociations
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Summary

• We are in a period of revolutionary change
• Research development in is front of it
• We have a chance to
• Join the leading frontier,
• Follow . or
• Opponent the stream

Lets choose our place and enjoy it!