Company X General Information
Company X General Information
Note: This is a simplified protocol of an assessment interview. It has been prepared for the use in an interactive
assessment briefing workshop.
Business Parameters
Company X
• Has 4000 employees world wide
• Central office is in Y in Germany
• They are a leading organisation in pneumatics and robotic. Their major business is the establishment of
manufacturing plants, robotic systems, and building control systems. Part of the business is the
establishment of computer supported control systems in buildings for lighting, heating, etc., including the
reading of sensors, controlling robotic systems (SPS programming), visualisation of the status of systems,
and guidance for operators to give control inputs to systems.
• The business unit Z in Austria is responsible for all Eastern Europe businesses. This site has 150 employees
specialised in the adaptation of systems to the customer needs. The department to be assessed (control
systems software development department) has 20 employees.
• The control systems and software are sold across the world with sales representatives in 170 countries.
• Company X is ISO 9001 certified but the software development sections of the firm are not covering ISO
9001 processes really efficiently. (audits mainly based on the surrounding hardware / electronics equipment
development).
Organisation
Organigram
Business Unit Z
Board of Directors
Head of Board
Mr Koenig
Technical Director
Mr Herzog
Division
Robotic HW
Division
Control Systems SW
Mr Jung
Controlling Director
Mr Müller
Division
Financial Control
Division
Quality Control
Mr Nadasi
Sales Director
Mr Maier
Division
Acquisition
Division
Sales
Division
Production Planning
Robotic HW
Production Planning
Control Systems SW
Development
Financial Control
Quality Control
Acquisition
Sales
Robotic Systems Research, and Systems Specification
Planning of Production Systems
Development of software to control robotic, heating, lighting, etc. systems
and also to visualise the system status to operators
Planning and budgeting of projects. Cost control.
ISO 9001 audits, acceptance testing with customers
Acquisition and Supplier Control
Sales administration, accounting, and customer requirements collection and
forwarding of requirements to the responsible divisions; e.g. new software
requirement to a team from financial control (estimate cost), and control
systems SW (technical specification).
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Company X General Information
Project VISU
General
There is a trend that within control systems more and more parts are managed by SW. There was an increase of
the SW part of the systems control SW by about 500% over the last 5 years (doubling the code per year).
A typical product sold some hundred times (Control Systems SW)
In the section building control systems a product VISU is used to measure parameters like temperature, pressure,
etc. and to manage the fuel injection, valves, room temperature regulation, etc. of a computer controlled heating
system in large buildings. The data measured are used to visualise the system status for operator terminals.
Organigram
Business Unit Z
Board of Directors
Head of Board
Mr Koenig
Technical Director
Mr Herzog
Division
Robotic HW
Controlling Director
Mr Müller
Division
Control Systems SW
Mr Jung
Division
Financial Control
Sales Director
Mr Maier
Division
Quality Control
Mr Nadasi
Division
Acquisition
Project VISU
Ken
Project Manager
SW Developer
Mr A
SW Developer
Mr B
SW Developer
Mr C
SW Developer
Mr D
Electronics Expert
Mr E
Pneumatics Expert
Mr F
Test
Mr G
Division
Production Planning
Sensors
Control
Display
Oprator control inputs
.
.
.
.
Control
System
Control inputs
Robotic
System (SPS)
•
Written in C
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Visualisation
for Operator
Division
Sales
Company X General Information
•
•
•
•
1,5 Million Lines of Code
30000 variables can be managed as a maximum at the same time (depending on how many sensors and other
data reading devices will be connected and will deliver values).
The same control system can be configured to many environments (like data applications in car engine
control systems)
Real Time Processing
A description of the situation by the top manager
Company X was originally just a hardware focussed engineering company (in German: Maschinenbau
Ingenieure) and the importance of software came much later. The software development was started by a group
of hardware engineers with no specific software engineering education. The software division in business unit Z
grew from 1 to 20 software engineers in just 5 years.
The requirements management for customers runs through the sales department (collecting and classifying
requirements) which forwards software requirements to a team formed by representatives of the control systems
SW department and the financial control to technically evaluate a new requirement and estimate its cost impact.
As the software had to be adapted and corrected many times after delivery to customers a significant investment
had been done in change control (to manage and track changes) and configuration management (to handle the
growing software and many versions) procedures.
Still a financial situation appeared which needs better understanding of software processes and potentials of
improvement. So far 70% of personnel is consumed by maintenance of the already delivered versions and
maintenace effort seems still to increase. With only 30% staff left (and decreasing to 0, as the top managers
feared) for new software (required innovations) a financial problem to remain competitive was expected in 2
years time if nothing happened.
A description of the situation by the department head
The department head had a more technical view on the problem, which he called the monolithic architecture. He
was confronted with
• A product that had been developed with no architectural design and every change could have an impact on a
number of modules, as the interfaces within the software were not documented.
• Thus each defect correction led to a number of side effects and further changes, with a largely increasing
maintenance effort.
• The department head felt that a software process assessment is needed to identify the root causes of the
problems and establish a plan for the future.
General Assessment Goals
•
•
•
An analysis of the strengths and weaknesses
An analysis concerning which of the identified weaknesses contribute to the above described problem
An improvement plan dealing with these problems and establishing a future improved organisation within 2
years
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