Sulava: Improving software architecting practices in machine control systems

Introduction

Traditionally, machine control systems have been developed in-house for limited business and work environments without systematic software architecture work. However, new challenges of such systems and lean process management approaches require improved software architecture practices. The aim of the project is to develop and study good software architecting practices in agile processes and create software architecture solutions for the next generation of machine control systems. To this end, the project will 1) map out, study and develop practices for designing, documenting and evaluating software architectures for machine control systems, 2) create a knowledge base for software architecture in machine control systems, and 3) develop a reference architecture for the next generation of machine control systems. The results related to topics 1) and 2) are expected to be largely generalized for software industry, although machine control domain is used as a case study.

The project is funded by the Finnish Agency for Technology and Innovation (TEKES). The industrial partners are Cybercom, John Deere, Metso Automation, Sandvik, Vincit, and Wapice. The project funding duration is August 2010 till December 2011. The work continues at least during 2012 concentrating on elaborating the research results and publishing.