Our Latest Blog Articles
On the way to development 4.0 Enter the race with Knowledge Based Engineering You might think the industry is in an eternal race. In a race in which the time to market of a product embodies the lap time and product quality is the decisive factor in staying in the race - in competition. The company that develops, produces and launches the best product the fastest is ahead. As in motor sports, there are also innovation thrusts around product development. Digitalization is one of the most important developments and is in full swing. In this context, Knowledge Based Engineering (KBE) [...]
What makes modular software development so special? Modular software development refers to the separation of a software project into individual, logically separated components. This modularity leads to the fact that the individually available software components can be developed separately from each other and then (re)used. As already mentioned in the blog post on unit testing , this has the great advantage that the individual modules can be tested separately. Software developers can use already finished components without (partially) redeveloping them. This blog post will discuss how software packages are created and delivered. One of the most common ways to realize [...]
The Sword of Damocles of Digitalization " Digitalization " and - in the technical field - " Industry 4.0 " are omnipresent and much discussed. To some, they may already seem trite, but there are also many debated concerns about the future world of work and the preservation of one's own job. In almost all areas, a wide variety of processes can be automated today and the technical possibilities are constantly growing. The job description of an engineer is also affected by this, so that current developments can cause not only enthusiasm, but also worries and fears about the future. [...]
Unpopular Onlooker: The Risk At some point we are all customers and none of us likes to buy a pig in a poke. The bigger the investment - for example an individual software solution - the less risk you want to take. Unfortunately, this risk seems to increase with the size of the project. This also applies to the contractor, depending on the contract. Frequently, fixed budgets for a fixed scope of delivery are agreed in this way. Although this provides clarity about sums and deadlines, what happens until the project is completed, the laughter about some project cartoons gets [...]
In software development, testing applications and troubleshooting takes up a large part of the time. If the modules of a software are clearly separated by loose coupling of dependencies, the software can be tested in isolation using Dependency Injection and Mock objects. However, if external resources are used by the software, such as USB devices or databases, automated testing becomes more difficult. So this blog post is about testing a database connection with Entity Framework 6. A simple ASP.NET MVC application Fig. 1 shows the rough software architecture of a simple ASP.NET MVC App. The app consists of several layers [...]
This text follows on from the previous article " The CAD-CAM Process Chain: The Status Quo ". An important prerequisite for the optimization of the CAD-CAM process chain is the avoidance of media breaks and the associated loss of information. Media breaks occur when different, unconnected, often even incompatible systems are used for different tasks in the product development process. This does not mean that only systems "from one casting" are suitable for modern production. Coordinated systems and, above all, the underlying processes also offer many possibilities. First we consider the problem of information loss and its origin. [...]
Challenge to determine the use case of IoT The Internet of Things is characterized by the technical connection of devices and systems to the Internet. Although this connection is the starting point of many IoT projects, in most cases it can be realized with relatively little effort after careful consideration of the available options. The mere technical use of IoT, however, does not generate any business value per se, neither for the product, for the process nor for the company as the product or process owner. One of the challenges that must be considered at the beginning of a project [...]
How do we define the CAD-CAM process chain? The " CAD-CAM process chain " is a frequently mentioned and recurring buzzword in the field of production-related design. But what is this anyway? And who benefits from that? We want to address these questions together and try to find some answers. Digitization as a puzzle piece to the finished product Let's first look at the use of computers in design and manufacturing. The use of CAD software (Computer Aided Design) has been widespread in the field of design for many years. For this purpose, the software market offers a wide [...]
The term Internet of Things describes the connection of systems, devices and everyday things to the Internet. The term basically does not distinguish the exact way of connection or the resulting design of the application. Industrial Internet of Things (short: IIoT) is a collective term that describes the connection of industrial machines and production plants. The term IoT, on the other hand, is often used to refer to ubiquitous, consumer-oriented IoT products. IoT and IIoT - A technical difference? If you look at the application examples for the Internet of Things already known today, you can distinguish between two large [...]
