Tuesday October 3rd 2023
With a full room of attendees from all over the Netherlands and Germany, the first Software Quality automation event was a big success! The event showcased the possibilities of model driven software engineering in practice, as told by our customers.
Our common goal, to improve the way software is built, is what brought us (Axini, Cordis SUITE and ISG from Stuttgart) together to organize this event. We are on a mission to make platforms and tools that help you make your software systems faster and with higher quality. Each of our solutions automates steps in the software engineering process, to make it possible to get feedback on your system before it’s even built and to improve the quality of your systems once they are ready and in use. That’s why we call it Software Quality Automation.
Our first speaker, Wim Bor platform architect at ASML, gave a passionate talk about how using Cordis SUITE enables ASML to “work smarter, not harder”. The topic of the talk was how low-code enabled the successful redesign of a Qualification control system. With traditional approaches, it had been proved that time and quality requirements could not be met. As Bor explains: in mechanical engineering, the focus is more on design than on implementation, whereas in software development, it is the opposite. This difference highlights the challenge for the software development of the Qualification system. Using Cordis SUITE, the focus moved to design, from where the code is automatically generated. Wim ended the talk with the following call to action: “Do you need to take action, or do you already develop software in a smart way?”
Ali Karim, Head of Digitalization at Heitec, came to Eindhoven to talk about the use of model-based platform ISG-virtuos for virtual commissioning. This is a big step beyond digital twins. He showed us how Heitec uses the tools of ISG for their clients. To quote Ali: “Virtual commissioning is a simulation method in which the control system is linked to a simulation model of the component, machine or plant”. He showed impressive examples of the power and scale of the virtual commissioning platform that they have developed with ISG. The benefit is that software can already be developed and tested without the hardware. This model-based platform enables you to change from a conventional process to a model-based process. It allows for more parallelization and speed up in the development of production plants, with the same or even higher quality.
The final speakers were Arjen Klomp and Bryan Bakker from Thermo Fisher Scientific. The title of their talk was “Integration as a non-event". Their challenge is that given that complexity is increasing exponentially, manual testing does not scale sufficiently. They spoke about their experiences with the Axini Modeling Platform for modeling and test-automation. Measurements show that teams that use modeling and model-based testing are significantly more productive, in particular because this way of working introduces less bugs/incidents in integration and/or production. As Arjen stated “MBT enables to do more, with less effort”.
At the end of the event there was time to connect with the speakers and system integrators to chat while enjoying some drinks and snacks. We intent to repeat the event in Germany in a few months. Next year we will be back in Eindhoven to show you more about the possibilities of software quality automation and the solutions it could bring to your software development process!