Process Insights 2019 Roundup

Process management by the industry for the industry

PEDCO attended the Process Insights Germany 2019 conference in Nuremberg, Germany on March 12th, 2019. We had a great time listening to and discussing process engineering with individuals from companies such as Schaeffler, Hella, Audi, Infineon, BSH, the Software Engineering Institute (SEI), and of course, the host Method Park.

There were various topics discussed such as Autonomy, AI, and Assurance, Blockchain and Processes, Agility in Processes, and even Work 4.0 and what does that mean.

Artificial Intelligence and Trust

One speech that stuck out to us was the Keynote speech given in the morning by Dr. Paul Neilsen, Director and CEO of the Software Engineering Institute. He focused on autonomy and AI and the impact it has on humans. He mentioned that we use AI to explore the universe and that these autonomous systems in use today are a result of decades worth of R&D. We have to think that there is a convergence of software capabilities now and that this has evolved over time as we have learned more about data and the impact of this world of connectedness we currently live in.

Dr. Neilsen mentioned in regards to AI that trust is a major issue. Specifically, when talking about AI driving and the fear humans have of “letting go” and letting the car drive. Humans still think that they should be in control, however, if we want the human as a backup in these situations, how do we have the human have situational awareness?

These are the things we have to start thinking about when it comes to AI, automation, and assurance.

Compliance

Dr. Bernd Hindel, CEO of Method Park spoke specifically about Automotive SPICE and it’s evolution in the upcoming months. Starting off he also spoke about autonomous driving and mentioned a the KPMG Global Automotive Executive Survey done in 2018 on who will be the automotive expert leader to translate autonomous driving in 2025. Top contenders? BMW Group with 20%, Tesla Motors at 14% and Ford Group at 6%.

When thinking about autonomous driving we have to think about the regulations. Connected car innovations require ISO26262. And what does this require? Processes. These processes are defined and improved by Automotive SPICE (ASPICE).

ASPICE defines what you have to do, as well as the results, but it’s important to remember that maturity models are not process definitions. Processes define the how, reference models such as ASPICE and CMMI define the infrastructure.

Because of this, it’s important to map your processes to your various reference models, just like you can do with Applied SAFe, and then identify the gaps to make sure that you are fully compliant.

We had a great time explaining Applied SAFe to the participants at the conference.

Agility on Processes

Companies are changing and moving towards being agile organizations. Why? Because there is an improved speed to proficiency, there is reduced overhead with faster understanding, processes become more common, there are reduced process change cycles, and most of all, there is assured compliance.

As spoken by Tim Schulte, of the Schaeffler Group, it’s important to promote agility through flexible process management. These include spontaneous collaboration activities and they also promote new processes and methods.

Looking at a model-driven structure it’s necessary to:

Plan and keep an eye on external change events
Do and automate your process, and allow for change
Check and develop DevOps tooling
Act and optimize the process and generate new ones

We need to be adaptive, use models, and automate everything. Potentially, blockchain can also reduce the workload.

The final keynote speaker, Ralph Goldschmidt, CEO of Goldschmidt and Friends, spoke about workplace culture and Work 4.0. He mentioned that the speed of adaptation and learning has increased but the speed of change has grown exponentially within the workplace. It’s always nice to change something rather than be changed, right?

From a structural perspective, when you are optimizing your performance and still have high flexibility, that is when you are agile.

All of this could not be accomplished without having trust and confidence within your workplace. When confidence is low, the time to do things takes longer and your costs go up. We need to constantly add confidence to each other and have the willingness to change.

On the spirit of having a great culture, we ended the night with a Foosball (Kicker) tournament!

Similar to the World Cup, the teams were broken up into the various countries around the world with two people from each country. The final was a tough match between Germany and France, but in the end, it was Germany that took the Champion title home!