Introduction to platform-based integration

In the modern high-tech industry, many companies face the need to improve development efficiency. Platform-based development is seen as a means to reduce lead times, improve quality and reduce development effort. At the same time, solutions need to be flexible to offer customizable and configurable products. The success of the platform on those aspects is dependent on the architectural choices for granularity, interfaces and morphology. This determines how products can be built from platforms and modules. Often, those platforms need to be built on existing assets, leading to architectural and organizational dilemma’s through constraints of those assets.

As organization needs to follow strategy, definition of platforms and modules also involves changes in the organization. We will present our approach on the organization and the effect on the product development process.

Fixing reference architecture...

A platform approach promises R&D-efficiency, improved quality, flexible development of customized solutions, and a short time-to-market.

However, getting to platforms is never easy. We will present the challenges and successes in our efforts to create a reference architecture and platform for the ink jet drying process for professional printers at Canon Production Printing.

This is particular challenging, as many real-life difficulties are present: the pressure to be more productive and achieve component-based synergy in R&D, while developing and delivering inherently complex systems with high quality and performance, by multi-disciplinary teams located at two sites in a new organization structure.

Join us in the discussion about success factors and lessons learned.

Considering optimal granularity for Vanderlande Parcel-platform

One of the strategic objectives of Vanderlande Industries is the transformation from an engineering-to-order to  a configure-to-order company.  In the past years VI already went through this transition for its Airports market segment, a similar transition is now taking place for all market segments. This new approach is focussing on a platform for each market segment (Airport, Warehouse and Parcel). For the Parcel market until recently VI  built its material handling systems as specific solutions for each customer. In the Parcel-platform the company now creates a portfolio of pre-defined modules that can be customized and integrated to a solution meeting the needs of individual customers. While defining these platforms the right integration level (to be supplied to the customer solution projects) needed to be established. VI and ESI worked together in an exploratory project to define a conceptual model that can be used to reason about the cost/benefit of such platform choices. In this presentation an overview of the results of this project and its practical application will be discussed.