VP Embedded System Innovation – 2024-2027

The target of the Vraaggestuurde Programma (VP) ESI is to drive advances in high-tech systems development by embedding cutting-edge engineering methodologies in the Dutch high-tech systems industry to cope with the ever-increasing complexity of their products: (i) creating impactful and industrially applicable methodologies and (ii) providing support to the high-tech industry to apply the results. The Dutch high-tech industry is responsible for a large portion of Dutch private R&D expenditure. Many companies are worldwide market and innovation leaders. They bring systems to the market with ever-higher performance and dependability, more and more functionality, better cost performance ratios, and tighter integration in customer processes. To strengthen their market position, the industry needs to deliver innovations continuously (shorten time-to-market) and dependably. The complexity of high-tech systems grows steeply due to product diversification and customer-specific products, tight integration, and optimization in customer processes (system of systems), AI, etc. Combining the growing complexity with the need for continuous innovation and high dependability asks for (i) systems engineering methodologies to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, quality, and cost of product development and (ii) a highly qualified workforce capable to apply such methodologies in the industry, addressing aspects such as:
• multi-disciplinary architecting and design;
• efficient and effective product innovation process (e.g., model-based methodologies, AI-for-engineering, virtualization and simulation, etc.);
• the full product life-cycle context (continuous updates and upgrades during the full product life cycle);
• creation of systems in industrial eco-systems (OEMs, suppliers, innovation partners, service providers, etc.);
• integrating of systems into systems-of-systems (i.e., tight integration in customer-specific workflows and system);
• continuous and lifelong knowledge and skill development (human capital development).
The industry has a large human capital challenge: (system) engineers that can deal with the complexity of high-tech systems are scarce. This asks for break-through innovations for systems engineering methodologies based on the following vision: In 2035, engineers in the high-tech industry will more than double their productivity and effectivity by their intense “side-by-side” collaboration with digital engineering assistants tapping into the organization’s system, domain and engineering knowledge.