PhD Thesis Final Defense to be held on December 9, 2019, at 14:00
Photo Credit: Emmanouil Ntanos
The examination is open to anyone who wishes to attend (Decision Support Systems Laboratory, Meeting Room (Room 0.2.2, Ground Floor,
Old Electrical and Comp. Engineering).
Thesis Title: Incorporation of innovative digital services in industrial products
Abstract: Modern manufacturing businesses are moving away from producing mainly physical products and start enriching them with relevant value-added services. This can lead to the creation of unified “Product-Service Systems” (PSS), which can replace purely physical offerings in consumer and industrial markets.
The integration of services in modern industrial products is supported by Information and Communication Technology (ICT). ICT, and software applications in particular, enable the provision of advanced services by offering the necessary communication channels, automation, business logic and data processing, storage and transmission capabilities.
Nevertheless, there are no satisfactory methodologies and tools for the development of software for the particular circumstances of a Product – Service System. Nearly all PSS development methodologies in the current literature focus on strategic or operational aspects of the PSS, while mostly ignoring the development of the necessary software for the integration and implementation of digital services.
Based on an analysis of the current literature, a series of general requirements for appropriate methods and tools are defined: support for multiple types of software applications, support for model-driven development, provision of an Integrated Development Environment, interoperability with the service provision ICT infrastructure and support for Service – Oriented Architectures and Business Process Management technologies.
In order to satisfy these requirements, and based on the MDSEA (Model-Driven Service Engineering Architecture) framework, a suitable software development methodology is proposed. The methodology supports modelling and development using both “structural” and “behavioural” perspectives of the service system. The methodology can drive the development of standalone software, web services, service compositions and executable business processes. Additionally, the architecture of a suitable Integrated Development Environment is described. The development environment is interoperable with external service system modelling and engineering tools, as well as with the service provision ICT system.
In order to evaluate the methodology and the proposed tool, a prototype Development Platform was developed in the framework of a larger research project. The methodology and tools were applied in three industrial pilots involving the integration of digital services in industrial products and the development of Product – Service Systems. The evaluation demonstrated improved communication and collaboration between participants in the software engineering process.
Keywords: Product-Service System, Software Engineering, Model-Driven, Tool Integration, Integrated Development Environment, Manufacturing
Supervisor: Dimitris Askounis, Professor
PhD student: Emmanouil Ntanos