The expectations of users are becoming increasingly high. They expect user friendly interfaces. They expect the ability to connect your devices to their systems.
They expect to maintain and support the devices with a minimum of technical expertise. Why? Because all around them PC based applications are user friendly. Because connectivity when properly used improves productivity and reduces costs. For instance according to Bill Kernodle of Clemson University the ability to access key production machine’s information can “… reduce stock outs, wait times, and inventories by 90 percent for traditional supply chains by getting total asset visibility and by making decisions in daily time intervals rather than weekly…”.
If you have not begun to meet these expectations it is time to start. There are at least three strategies:
Supplement your current product
Supplementing requires that your product have a physical and logical interface (e.g. a serial port) that allows you to add a smart device as a front end. This strategy makes financial sense only if the value of the legacy device (or the service it provides) is substantially higher then the cost of the front end device. Examples of this stragety at work are provided in “The Supplement Development Strategy at Work” .
Incremental improvement of your product’s software
Incremental improvement of your product’s software requires that your product provide the underlying support that the improvement needs. For instance, if “universal” connectivity is the area of improvement, your product must provide (or be modifiable to provide) the physical (Ethernet, serial etc.) and logical (at least a TCP/IP stack with socket interface) building blocks. Incremental improvements can make a great deal of financial sense when your device already has all the building blocks. With many smart devices being nothing more then PCs in disguise this is often the case without you even knowing about it.
The five year technology vision for a South Carolina manufacturer of large industrial machines used this to great effect. Their next generation machine used a PC based control system. By introducing a series of small software changes, the system can be easily expanded to meet not only the current needs but also future needs for wide variety of customer requested functionality including remote access, both control and information access. A generalized universal remote information access example based on this work is provided in “Accessing Devices Using a Web Service“. (Download a complete prototype implementation of the embeddable web service server) Small incremental changes on the device side can be made even more powerful when we put cutting edge (but very low cost) server technology to work for us. Such a change is illustrated in “A Smart Device Update Web Service“.
Replace your product’s software
If you can not supplement or incrementally improve, then the only two options left are to let the product die a natural death or replace it. If the electronic base is not adequate then this can include a replacement of both hardware and software. This is a significant and risky undertaking. In the area of software the first step is the selection/design of the architecture. In the object oriented world this would be termed a framework. A framework tends to be domain specific. A specific domain framework example is a control application for embedded devices. The most exciting aspect of a domain framework is the ability to add significant automation to the development process. (Download a complete implementation of the control application framework including the development automation tools)
Terry Ess is a graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of Texas who has been rigorously involved with all aspects of product development. He has served as Vice President of Engineering for an East Coast manufacturer of custom telecommunications equipment and has been the top bean counter as he says for a medium-sized Mid-west manufacturer. For the past 10 years, Ess has worked as a retained consultant, handling everything from straightforward engineering projects for high-tech industries to new product design and testing. Ess and his wife, Helena, currently reside in Upstate South Carolina where he spends his spare time building furniture and enjoying physical fitness activities.
