Product focused process improvement in the embedded systems industry

Software specific problems have been handled in the software community through focusing on the software process, and continuous improvement of that software process. However, the contribution of software process improvement (SPI) to product quality has not been proven yet. The PROFES project customised successful approaches into one embedded systems specific SPI methodology fucused on improving product quality. This PROFES improvement methodology has been fully applied in three embedded systems developing organisations: Dräger Medical Technology, Ericsson and Tokheim. in three different industries (telecommunication, medical systems, and petrolem retailing). The main message from these applicalions is that PROFES realiy helps in focusing to product areas that have a priority for improvement. The companies strongly support that only effort is spent on product attributes that are relevant. Quality of the final product is the central objective, which is highly appreciated, since the embedded system itself is being sold and not the development process that created it.