Keynote Talks
- Takahiro Fujimoto (The University of Tokyo)
- Kyo Chul Kang (Pohang University of Science and Technology)
- Steven P. Reiss (Brown University)
The Spectrum of Architectural Modularity and Integrality:
Toward a Balanced View for Analyzing Future Industrial Competition
by Takahiro Fujimoto (Wednesday 09:15-10:30)
Abstract
The spectrum of architectural modularity and integrality is one of the key dimensions for predicting a country's industrial structure. Rather than unilaterally emphasizing the power of modularity, we need to introduce a balanced framework that can handle both macro and micro architectures of an artifact from both ex-ante and ex-post viewpoints. For example, when a complex product faces demanding functional requirements and/or environmental constraints (e.g., high-functional cars), engineers' ex-ante efforts to modularize its micro-architecture and the market's ex-post selection of products with integral macro-architecture are totally compatible. The presentation proposes a framework of architecture-based comparative advantage, in which we predict that a country with rich endowment of manufacturing sites (genba) with coordinative capability tends to enjoy competitive advantage in coordination-intensive (integral) products, whereas those with specific capability tends to demonstrate competitiveness in coordination-saving (modular) products. Thus, an evolutionary framework of dynamic fit between organizational capability and product-process architecture as a source of design-based comparative advantage may be able to better predict the global trade/industry structures in the 21st century, when intra-industrial trade at the minute level is quite common.
Bio
Takahiro (Taka) Fujimoto is a professor, Faculty of Economics at University of Tokyo, Executive Director of Manufacturing Management Research Center (MMRC). He is also Faculty Fellow of Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry, and Senior Research Associate at Harvard Business School. He specializes in technology and operations management. Fujimoto graduated from Tokyo University and joined Mitsubishi Research Institute in 1979. He received doctoral degree from Harvard Business School in 1989. Fujimoto's main publications in English include: Competing to Be Really, REALLY Good (2007), The Evolution of a Manufacturing System at Toyota (1999) and Product Development Performance: Strategy, Organization, and Management in the World Auto Industry (1991) with Kim B. Clark.
Web Page: http://www.e.u-tokyo.ac.jp/fservice/faculty/fujimoto/fujimoto.e/fujimoto01.e.html
Keynote video
Video + slides
Slides
Modularity in the Context of Product Line Variability
by Kyo Chul Kang (Thursday 09:15-10:30)
Abstract
Product line software engineering (PLSE) has been recognized as a key software development paradigm for meeting diverse needs of the global market efficiently and effectively giving competitive advantages to IT industries and embedded systems developers. The PLSE paradigm has been changing the way software developers think about software development: from the single application view to the application family, i.e., product line, view.
Several software engineering concepts and techniques have been developed to support the product line engineering, including commonality and variability analysis, product line architecture, variation points and variants, and variability management. However, modularity of software in the context of product line engineering has become even more important than it was in the context of single application development as we need to manage variability and also promote reuse across a family of related applications. We must take the variability into consideration when we design for modularity, bringing another dimension of complexity into software engineering.
In my talk, I will give an overview of the evolution of reuse concepts, introduce product line engineering, and then discuss various approaches to modularity in the context of product line variability. Pending research issues will also be discussed.
Bio
Dr. KyoChul Kang received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1982. Since then he has worked as a visiting professor at the University of Michigan and as a member of technical staff at Bell Communications Research and AT&T Bell Laboratories before joining the Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University as a senior member in 1987. He is currently a professor at the Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) in Korea. He served as General Chair for the 8th International Conference on Software Reuse (ICSR) held in Madrid, Spain in 2004, General Chair for the 11th International Software Product Line Conference (SPLC2007) held in Kyoto, Japan in September 2007, and also for the 14th International Software Product Line Conference (SPLC2010) held in Jeju, Korea in September 2010.
While at the University of Michigan, he was involved in the development of PSL/PSA, a requirements engineering tool system, and a Meta modeling technique. Since then his research has focused on software reuse and software product line engineering. His current research areas include software reuse and product line engineering, requirements engineering, and computer-aided software engineering.
Web Page: http://selab.postech.ac.kr/kck/
Keynote video
Motherhood and Apple Pie: Modularity in Modern Applications and Tools to
Support Itby Steven P. Reiss (Friday 09:15-10:30)
Abstract
Modularity has been around for a long time. Good designers attempt to make use of it as much as possible. Languages have been developed to support it. Language extensions have attempted to deal with the situations where languages themselves fail. Tools have been designed to accommodate and encourage it. Most of these efforts, however, are geared toward "simple" homogeneous applications. Unfortunately, modern applications can be a lot more complex and bring up new and exciting challenges in terms of modularity.
Today's applications, even relatively simple ones, involve multiple processes running on multiple machines, processes that are often external to the application itself and out of the control of the developers. The individual processes involve multiple threads, complex thread interactions, and opaque libraries. All these affect the way we look at systems and how we approach modularity.
In this talk we will look at the organization of several applications we have been building including the programming environment Code Bubbles, the semantic search tool S6, and our intelligent office sign, and consider how modular they are, how flexible their design is, and how we succeeded or failed in accommodating modularity in the face of other challenges such as portability, maintainability, efficiency, and extensibility. We will also look at how programming environments and tools, which are integral to the programming process, can either help or hinder modularity.
Bio
Steven Reiss is Professor of Computer Science in the Computer Science Department at Brown University. He has been a member of the Brown faculty since 1977. He is the author of numerous papers in journals and proceedings as well as two books. He has served on a variety of conference program committees for SIGPLAN, SIGSOFT, and IEEE. He has written several software systems that have been widely distributed outside of Brown.
Dr. Reiss's research interests and expertise center around programming, in particular making programming simpler and more understandable. He has done extensive research in the areas of programming tools and environments as well as program visualization. He has also done work on message-based integration, program design, databases, and the debugging, testing and checking of complex systems.
Current research by Dr. Reiss includes a novel approach to code search based on test cases and other semantic properties, work on the visualization and analysis of the dynamics of complex software systems, and Code Bubbles, a working-set based user interfaces for programming environments. For more information look at http://www.cs.brown.edu/~spr/.