Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SOX2-Cloud (Integrated Safety Engineering Platform for electrical and electronic systems for transportation)

Teaser

Electrical and electronic systems (Electrical/Electronic/Programmable Electronic Safety-related Systems – E/E/PE) play an important role in our lives and take over important decisions and safety-related functions. Accidents and hazards may arise due to technical defects in...

Summary

Electrical and electronic systems (Electrical/Electronic/Programmable Electronic Safety-related Systems – E/E/PE) play an important role in our lives and take over important decisions and safety-related functions. Accidents and hazards may arise due to technical defects in control and sensor systems, such as in equipment, vehicles and household appliances. Thus, unsafe electric and/or electronics represent an underestimated risk of life-threats for people.

The worst case is, that electric or electronic product failures cause injuries or even deaths. Thus, and improved safety analysis in system design is strongly required to guarantee the quality and safety of products – especially in transport. In the automotive supply industry, further waves of consolidation are connected to marked growth. This is partly due to a progressive reduction of vertical integration on the part of the OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer), on the other hand, there is an increasing reduction in the depth of development and a transfer of development services to specialized and modular system suppliers.

To speed-up these development services is today not possible because of e.g. missing software collaboration tools to enable a close cooperation between OEM’s and suppliers in particular for those components that influence safety and security. With this project, EnCo Software wants to change this situation through an innovative approach and provide businesses with an intelligent tool for the development process, which integrates all individual tasks/documents and results in development of all components of an E/E/PE systems in one process.
The Cloud-based SafetyOffice X2 (C-SOX) is going to become a standard for cost efficient and secured collaborations of OEM suppliers offering input and design know-how for safety and security requirements in all stages of system development, for all kind of electronic systems and their respective safety documentation.


For society, this means

• Reducing Liability risk: Better engineered and safer products reduce the risk of being sued for faulty products and being faced with large legal and product recall bills as well as having to pay hefty fines to customers and governments.

• Reducing engineering costs: By dramatically shortening and streamlining the engineering process companies can bring new products faster to market. Whilst EnCo Software helps them to safe costs EnCo software also helps them to bring new products faster to market,
satisfying customers’ expectations of shorter product release cycles and staying ahead of the competition with more innovative and safer products.

• Less IT costs: C-SOX will be utilizing modern cloud technologies like Docker or Kubernets. Thus, deploying new versions will become very simple, whether in a private or in the public cloud offering. And all of it, without interrupting users or awkward maintenance windows

• Using AI (artificial intelligence) to build safer products: AI or machine learning algorithm will further improve product safety & security. One of the benefits that can only be achieved in the cloud is to use anonymous data to learn what works and what doesn’t so engineers
can design better products by avoiding mistakes made by others or conceptual design flaws identified by AI. AI creates entirely new opportunities for businesses, i.e. by letting AI design complete products or components, with minimal involvement of engineers further
automating the engineering process. Like AI is set to start writing entire software programs, it is set to engineer entire products.


The overall objective of the project

Objective of the project is the development of a successful concept for the introduction of the EnCo C_SOX solution into European markets. To update the current business Plan, we strive to achieve the following objectives:
• Generation and analysis of three use of cases: OEM + International; OEM + Tier 1; OEM + Tier 1 + Tier 2 f

Work performed

A detailed feasibility study with the following contents has been conducted:

1. We have evaluated and analysed the market potential of our product in selected key regions including estimation to market size/volume, segmentation, turnover to generate and market shares to conquer. Furthermore, we planned marketing and distribution activities.
- Besides, we have created a commercialization and market fit strategy.

2. Elaboration of the IT Specifications
- During Phase 2 we have created four use cases for various typical constellations of actors for testing (for example, OEM + Tier 1; OEM + Tier 1 + Tier 2; Connection of service providers like TÃœV)
- Establishing a sample system and slides for showing the exemplary workflow step by step through mock-up screenshots
3. Cloud & Data Security
- We have discussed Elaboration of general requirements / security challenges in the cloud and available potential solution for data security,
4. Obtaining customer feedback
- Conducting workshops with customers and cloud providers.
5. Development of IT-Consepts
- Implementation of the developed cloud-specific adaptations
- Development of a detailed demonstration strategy to be formulated based on discussion with potential collaborative partners, including developing pilot trial methodology with the aim of maximizing market awareness and acceptance; conducting target customer’s groups
interviews/ surveys.
6. Preparing a feasibility study report.
7. Strategic decisions on attractive future markets.


A key outcome of the C-SOX feasibility study was:

• Target markets: C-SOX’s target market are enterprises in industry sectors such as Automotive, Autonomous Mobile Machines, Autonomous Rail Systems. Automotive, however, presents the biggest opportunity by far and will be our primary focus.

• C-SOX belongs to the computer aided engineering (CAE) market category which is part of a much larger category called Engineering Software (ES). CAE presents about 13% of the ES market size, about $3.69bn worldwide in 2017. The ES market size is about $29bn worldwide.
The ES market is predicted to grow by CAGR 12.4% to $50bn in 2022. The CAE market will grow at (Combined annual growth rate) CAGR 11.1% to $6.4bn in 2022.

• Europe is particularly suitable for introducing the C-SOX. The feasibility study showed that the countries of France, UK, Italy and Spain will be important markets. Following the establishment in Europe, the conquest of North America and APCA will follow.

• Lead nurturing campaigns will play an important role, facilitated through mainly digital communication channels such as the website, blogs, or email. Creating relevant content, like whitepapers, blog posts, video, animation and other material will play an important part in
this strategy (content marketing).

• An important remark is that we do not cooperate with third cloud providers in the realization of the project. The reason for the private cloud among customers is above all that customers want to manage their data independently and do not want to give it to an external
cloud provider as this is a key feature to keep under our command – strategic for our success.


• After intensive research, we decided to use the Open Source Tool Papyrus for parts of our project (module System Designer). In this context, we want to collaborate with companies from the Papyrus Industry Consortium (IC) and Polarsys. The Papyrus IC is part of Polarsys, an
Eclipse working group created by large industry (AIRBUS, ERICSSON, SAAB) and by tools providers to collaborate on the creation and support of Open Source tools for the development of embedded systems.

•According to the customer feedback, we chance our product name from SOX2-Cloud (Safety Office X2 Cloud) into C-SOX (Cloud Safety Office)

Final results

The C-SOX is over the state of the art of computer aided engineering because of its business and user Value:

Business Value

1. Unification of fragmented engineering tools, simplifies and shortens engineering processes. It further reduces the investment required in training and removes labour intensive, but not value creating tasks from the process.
2. End-to-end visibility of the safety&security engineering process makes it easier for engineers to understand complex products, identify gaps in the safety chain and keep track of the overall process.
3. Collaboration between internal teams, 3rd parties and certification bodies (i.e. TÃœV) is essential in building modern products. EnCo will help parties involved in the engineering process to work closer together, working in parallel, whilst minimizing paper work and
communication overhead.

User Value

1. Consistent and always up-to-date data. Always. Everywhere.
2. Removes labour intensive and low value tasks from the engineers todo list
3. Simplifies moving back & forth between various engineering tools without re-entering necessary data
4. An intuitive and simple user interface helps engineers to build intuitive and simple to use products
5. Documentation is done whilst working with the tools, making it easier for the engineer to obtain required certification
6. Sharing and collaboration are at the core of C-SOX so working in larger teams won’t be a headache anymore.
7. Mobile, Tablet and Desktop UIs are native parts of C-SOX allowing engineers to work wherever they want to work and whenever inspiration strikes.
8. Full visibility of what is happening. Whenever things are changing you will understand what has changed, why and by whom. It won’t be hidden from the engineers because it was changed in a different tool and may would have never been discovered if not accidentally or
by chance of an email or verbal communication.
9. Reuse of proven safety analysis