In the session “The quest for engineering productivity”, Ben Pronk and fellow speakers showcased how starting from specifications can unlock automation and scalability across domains. Their presentations highlighted the shift from traditional design methods to more adaptive, specification-driven approaches that enable faster development and broader reuse.

With real-world examples and insights, the session emphasized that while the road to synthesis-based engineering may be bumpy, the productivity gains are tangible. As Ben Pronk noted:

“The road may be bumpy, but the productivity gains are real.”

This session encouraged attendees to rethink how systems are designed - starting from intent, and building toward scalable, future-ready solutions.

The challenges for embedded software design in modern Active Electronically Scanned Arrays (AESA) radar systems are outlined in this introduction presentation of the track. Due to the increasing possibilities to further digitize the radar RF transmit/receive units of this kind of systems, the flexibility and parallel execution of multiple capabilities is extended. This results in extended system capabilities and performance, but also calls for more complex software to process the massive data streams and at the same time manage the radar capability scheduling in real-time response toward measured events occurring in the real-world. This calls for the need of synthesis of code and configurations.  

Variability and evolution are key drivers of complexity in high-tech equipment. Every product has many variation points, resulting in a large number of unique system configurations. These systems must be maintained throughout the lifetime of the system, which may last several decades. During this time, digital technologies, e.g., containerization and orchestration technologies, may become deprecated or evolve many times. Manually configuring, updating, and deploying the software of each product variant, such that both functional and performance requirements of customers are satisfied,  is both expensive and time-consuming. 
This presentation describes a synthesis-based approach that aims to increase engineering productivity by automating the configuration, integration, and deployment of software for product variants, while considering the performance requirements of critical system flows.  

Supervisory controllers are crucial for the correct and safe operation of cyber-physical systems. As organizations face growing complexity and a shortage of skilled engineers, Synthesis-Based Engineering offers an approach that integrates model-based engineering with computer-aided design. This enables engineers to focus on ‘what’ the controller should do (the requirements), rather than ‘how’ it should do it (the implementation). Automatically synthesized controllers are correct-by-construction, enabling system level simulations, faster feedback cycles during development, and automatic code generation, that enhances productivity and controller quality. In this presentation, we explain Synthesis-Based Engineering and show applications at ASML/VDL-ETG and Rijkswaterstaat.

• P1 Future-fit organizations

• P3 Intelligent diagnostics: boosting equipment effectiveness

• P4 Understanding and evolving systems with Generative AI

• Posters