Complexity Issues in System Development: Examples from Automotive Electronics

Date: September 6, Place: Alan Turing, Time: 13:15

Jakob Axelsson, Volvo Car Corporation

Abstract

In this seminar, some of the major trends and drivers in the development of 
automotive electronics will be presented. One of the major concerns is how to 
deal with the increasing complexity, in particular in software. To be able to 
handle this, a better understanding of the nature of complexity is needed, which 
not only includes the system itself but also the organisation and people that 
participate in the development. Since the main activity of the organisation is 
information processing, resulting in a description of the product to be produced, 
the ability of humans to process information is at the heart of the problem. In 
this presentation, an initial attempt is made at describing some of the issues 
involved, and some of the strategies employed within the automotive industry to 
cope with the complexity.

Biography

Jakob Axelsson studied Computer Science in Linköping, Sweden, and Lausanne, 
Switzerland. He received an M.Sc. from Linköping University in 1993, and a Ph.D. 
in 1997 for a thesis on hardware/software codesign of real-time systems. He has 
been working at ABB Corporate Research and ABB Power Generation (now Alstom) in 
Baden, Switzerland, Volvo Technological Development (now Volvo Technology) and 
Carlstedt Research & Development in Göteborg, Sweden. He is currently with the 
Volvo Car Corporation in Göteborg, where he is program manager for research and 
advanced engineering for electrical and electronic systems. He is also an adjunct 
professor in software and systems engineering at Mälardalen University in Västerås.
 In addition, he is chairman of the board of the ARTES national graduate school 
in real-time and embedded systems, and was until recently president of the Swedish 
chapter of the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE).