WOSOCER 2012

Enabling transfer of knowledge between industry and academia: are we really able to?

GABRIELLA CARROZZA, Ph.D.

SESM Advanced Decision Support and Knowledge Based Systems in the field of Air Traffic Management, Defence and Logistic Support

The Company Founded in 1990, SESM Soluzioni Evolute per la Sistemistica e i Modelli s.c.a.r.l. is a no-profit private research centre part of Finmeccanica Group with the following share:

• SELEX Sistemi Integrati S.p.A. (90%) • SELEX Galileo S.p.A. (10%)

SELEX Sistemi Integrati and SELEX Galileo are two Italian companies of Finmeccanica Group, operating in the development of Large Systems for Homeland Protection, Air Traffic Control, Coastal and Maritime Surveillance. SESM promotes and manages research projects co-funded by European Commission, by the MIUR (Italian University and Research Ministry) and by the Italian Regions (local government), with particular interest in in the fields of air traffic management, defense and logistic support for reliability and availability of Systems of Systems

SESM Facts & Figures

Highly qualified people: •  Almost 120 employees across two

premises •  Average age 35 years •  Over 30 academic researchers, thesis

students and scholarship holders average present.

•  50 papers to International conferences and journals in the last 5 years

•  Knowledge hub between university and industry.

•  Partnership with more than 20 european universities.

Mission

•  SESM mission is to act as research and precompetitive development centre, to consolidate the position of privileged hub between University and Industry, with the objective to create a net of transversal competences and a group of qualified people for Shareholders needs.

24% 76%

High school Graduate

12%

88%

Post degree Graduate

Employees Qualifications

3%

33%

3%

30%

31%

Ricerca di base

Ricerca applicata

Investimenti PT

Sviluppo Precompetitivo

Sviluppo industiale

Base research

Applied research

Investment

Pre-competitive development

Industrial development

4

OUR SHAREHOLDERS MARKET & SOLUTION

Consolidated world leader in Land and Naval radar sensors

Key global player in Naval Combat System Integration, C4I and Air Defense Systems and Air Traffic Control Systems

World major player in Large Systems for Homeland Defense and Security

AIRBORNE, SURVEILLANCE & SECURITY SYSTEMS

AIRBORNE MISSION SYSTEMS

ATC/ATM & AIRPORT SYSTEMS

VTMIS & MARITIME AWARNESS

ADVANCED I.T. FOR SECURITY, LOGISTICS AND AUTOMATION

5

ABOUT 25% OF ITS TURNOVER INVESTED IN R&D IN 2011

THEIR NUMBERS

Revenues 765 €Million Backlog 1,600 €Million Employees 4,400

La Spezia

Rome

Fusaro

Giugliano Taranto

USA

Brazil

UK

Germany

UAE

Kenia Malaysia

Nerviano

Saudi Arabia

Genoa

Venezuela

Yemen

LAND ATC & ATP FINMECCANICA SELEX SISTEMI INTEGRATI NAVAL SECURITY C4I LOGISTICS

Italy

CRITICAL SOFTWARE, SYSTEMS AND INFRASTRUCTURE

•  Software represents an horizontal business pillar •  Strict dependability requirements •  Safety & Security standards

–  D0178-B –  CMMI 3

•  Huge variety of (sw) systems •  Middleware •  HMI & High Level Application •  Radar system software •  Advanced Combat Management Console

•  Complex solutions –  Legacy systems –  Integrated (C)OTS

The role of SW Integration, Verification and Validation (IV&V)

•  Dependability and quality threats coming from SW integration –  Additional sources of failures due to errors propagation among modules –  Transient manifestation of software failures –  Operational environment hard to reproduce

•  IV&V becomes crucial in all the phases of SLC ( Sw Life Cycle) -  Requirements engineering -  Design -  Implementation -  Testing

•  …aiming to –  Check software quality from different levels –  Address the as many bugs as possible before operational phase –  Minimize residual faults during operational phase

•  Along three main directions –  Test granularity –  Testing techniques –  Testing tools

The need for a reference (V-) model

•  Complexity and high criticality –  ask for a rigorous industrial process

•  Documentation •  Responsibility allocation among different teams •  “Consolidated” tools and practices

–  Unmask model dependability holes •  Very frequent delays due to the basic waterfall approach •  Unbalanced effort distribution effort across the different phases to respect

milestone plans •  Lack of cooperation and gap among designers/ developers/testers teams

…and its drawbacks

•  Rigorous should not mean unflexible! –  Huge effort in producing heavy documentation –  Difficulties in going backward in the process

•  No risk management strategies to mitigate delays –  Design “bugs” propagate into code and tests prior to surface –  Late code deliveries result into shortened testing phases

•  Start too late –  Integration reveals many bugs that could have been discovered / fixed during

component level testing –  Bad surprises on site due to inaccurate testing campaigns in-house

»  Crazy company costs increase!!!

•  Lay down NFRs testing campaigns that should rather be improved for such critical application scenarios

–  They are not a practice indeed

Therein lies the rub!

•  Despite of the Intensive effort devoted to IV&V, accounting for the 50% of the complete software production, delivered solutions still do not exhibit the expected quality and reliability level

•  Why ?? –  No room for NFRs extensive testing campaigns

•  Load and stress testing •  Robustness testing •  Operational scenarios reproduction in-house

–  No time for fault injection based exercises •  To stimulate system failures •  To feed failure prevention strategies definition

–  Limited budget for infrastructure and technology investments •  Testing environments virtualization •  Cloud computing to support distributed testing

–  No time for dedicated training, hence lack of skills –  Technology resistance –  Legacy solutions “ghost”

•  … too narrow room for research !

Promoting the TOK

RESEARCH & INNOVATION

ACADEMIA

R&D Associa

tions

EU Projects

National grants

Ph.D.

EFFORT ALLOCATION STRATEGIES

NFR TESTING

TECHNOLOGY SCOUTING

INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTIGATION

FAILURE PREDCTION

FAIULT DIAGNOSIS

Feeding the TOK

REAL SYSTEMS

INDUSTRIES STAKEHOLDERS

STANDARDIZATION BODIES

CERTIFICATION

ENTITIES

REQUIREMENTS

CASE STUDIES

PROCESSES

VALIDATION PLATFORMS

FIELD DATA & NEEDS

Innovation HUB

EFFORT ALLOCATION STRATEGIES

NFR TESTING

TECHNOLOGY SCOUTING

INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTIGATION

FAILURE PREDCTION

FAIULT DIAGNOSIS

REQUIREMENTS

CASE STUDIES

PROCESSES

VALIDATION PLATFORMS

FIELD DATA & NEEDS

Academia

Open research groups

Market, Innovative products

R&D Associations

SESM as Open Innovation Hub: our model

Selection and

Acquisition of

Innovation

Technology scouting Agile methodologies application

Improved Market

Solutions quality

Modeling Engineeri

ng Prototype

Innovative solutions

Verification and

Rapid Prototyping

Italian European projects, Real world Requirements

ideas

needs

funds

Real world feedback for new ideas and projects

Com

petitive advantage

SESM “University-Industry” R&D collaboration and scholarships project

In 2005 SESM has coordinated a number of scholarships funded by Finmeccanica, with the aim of: •  promoting the collaboration with Italian

Universities •  grant the education of students (Master thesis

and/or PhD students) •  improve the exchange of innovation and R&D

findings sharing. Scholarships have been realised under the “Centro Ricerche Radar” and “Iniziativa Software” umbrella. 9 Italian Universities have been involved as well as main companies from the FINMECCANICA group (Selex SI, Selex Galileo, Elsag Datamat, Ansaldo STS, Ansaldo Breda). The scholarships will end in 2013.

As main result of the study the “U-I” collaboration model performed by FINMECCANICA has been identified and a book based on the presentation and discussion of this model has been published

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Glad to answer your questions!