<p>The impact of computer programs in safety-critical systems has increased in the past decades and computer-based systems can now be found in a wide range of applications. </p><p>A new approach for developing dependable systems is documenting all design rationale that affects safety using Intent Specifications. A recent approach for developing complex systems efficiently and in an upgradeable manner is Component-Based System Engineering. In this thesis, these approaches are combined in the development and upgrade of a Remote Robot Control Unit by using the tool SpecTRM. </p><p>The case study showed that Intent Specifications and CBSE could successfully be combined. The tool SpecTRM was also studied during this work. It showed that traceability is of great importance during system upgrades. Since SpecTRM does not support formal verification of safety properties in design models, the SpecTRM-RL models were translated to Esterel code. Further analysis showed that functional verification can be efficient and useful when using the automatic model-checking tool available in Esterel Studio. This work also proposes a practical guideline for system upgrades in component-based systems, presented as the Sigma model. </p><p>The work also showed some shortcomings. First of all, the tool SpecTRM is at an early development stage and not yet mature for industrial use. Secondly, neither of the two languages SpecTRM-RL and Esterel was expressive enough for some of the numerical computations and data-exchange structures needed for navigation in the system. Finally, the verifier was not able to prove any data properties since valued signals are abstracted into pure signals during verification in Esterel Studio.</p>

<p>This master thesis has been carried out at Billerud AB in Skärblacka and Gruvön and at the Department of Science and Technology, University of Linköping. The purpose of this thesis work is to evaluate the new standardised IT system in comparison to the old systems in reference to create routines, models and working practices and to see how the daily work will be affected for the delivery coordinators.</p><p>Billerud is a packaging paper company with four production sites located in Gruvön, Karlsborg, Skärblacka and Beetham (United Kingdom). The company’s sales organisation is made up of sales offices around the world.</p><p>The thesis is based on the problem with differences in calculated and actual freight costs that have arisen over the years. Part of the study has therefore been aimed at reaching an understanding of why these differences occur.</p><p>Freight cost data has been gathered from Billerud Skärblacka and Billerud Gruvön for the years 2005 and 2006. From this data the author has seen for himself that a problem exists but also that there might be a way to change the trend.</p><p>The study then focused more on the current working practices and the forthcoming ones that will come with the implementation of the new IT system BonD. This system is meant to replace the IT systems of Billeruds four mills in 2007. The new IT system will shift focus to be more market oriented and hope is that working practices at the mills will be more unified.</p><p>The study of the new system has shown that alterations need to be made, and they need be made rather quickly. There are aspects that initially are lost from the old system that could prove troublesome in the future. One of these aspects that the author fears will lead to a worse situation is the decrease in importance of roll numbers; traceability can become an issue if nothing is done to ensure that the current traceability is maintained and improved.</p><p>A number of proposed measures for improving the working practices are stated in the recommendations. The main conclusion is that even though BonD will be an easier system to work with, largely depending on the user interface, there are factors and working practices that need to be changed in order facilitate the work of the delivery coordinators. With the difference in freight charges in mind, Billerud also needs to evaluate, review and revise the current freight charges allocated to their customers.</p>

<p>Today’s information systems engineering involves large number of stakeholders, wide geographical distribution and wide range of tools. Success in system engi-neering depends on effective human communication. Early understanding and modelling of the problem domain is a key to manage large scale systems and pro-jects. This requires stakeholders to reach a certain level of shared interpretation of the domain referred throughout the development</p><p>We propose a method for semantics driven change impact assessment. In our method, first a collaborative problem analysis is conducted. The problem analysis results in an agreed and committed common understanding of the prob-lem domain, expressed in a conceptual domain model. The constructed concep-tual domain-specific model is then actively used as a communication medium, e.g., to abstract development objects from representation format in order to expli-cate their semantics. Stakeholders browse the domain model and interactively as-sociate to product fragments by selecting concept clusters that best describe the contents (intended meaning) of the product fragments.</p><p>Associations of the development objects with concepts from domain model, as well as the domain model itself constitute the basis for change impact assess-ment throughout the development. Every revision of a development object in-vokes change impact notifications that are either confirmed or rejected. Accumu-lated statistics are used to refine associations via the domain model to the direct dependency links among development objects.</p><p>The method has been implemented in a prototype system CO2SY and has been evaluated in an experiment, where a set of test users has been provided with a problem domain description including a domain model and a set of develop-ment objects. The experiment was based on two real world cases. Users were asked to perform tasks using the prototype and two comparative tools. The method and prototype have been evaluated with respect to actual performance and users perceptions. The result shows actual effectiveness, perceived ease of use and usefulness comparing to other tools used in the experiment, as well as intention of the subjects to use the method in future.</p><p>A discussion of future research directions and possible revisions of the method concludes the thesis.</p>

Today’s information systems engineering involves large number of stakeholders, wide geographical distribution and wide range of tools. Success in system engi-neering depends on effective human communication. Early understanding and modelling of the problem domain is a key to manage large scale systems and pro-jects. This requires stakeholders to reach a certain level of shared interpretation of the domain referred throughout the development We propose a method for semantics driven change impact assessment. In our method, first a collaborative problem analysis is conducted. The problem analysis results in an agreed and committed common understanding of the prob-lem domain, expressed in a conceptual domain model. The constructed concep-tual domain-specific model is then actively used as a communication medium, e.g., to abstract development objects from representation format in order to expli-cate their semantics. Stakeholders browse the domain model and interactively as-sociate to product fragments by selecting concept clusters that best describe the contents (intended meaning) of the product fragments. Associations of the development objects with concepts from domain model, as well as the domain model itself constitute the basis for change impact assess-ment throughout the development. Every revision of a development object in-vokes change impact notifications that are either confirmed or rejected. Accumu-lated statistics are used to refine associations via the domain model to the direct dependency links among development objects. The method has been implemented in a prototype system CO2SY and has been evaluated in an experiment, where a set of test users has been provided with a problem domain description including a domain model and a set of develop-ment objects. The experiment was based on two real world cases. Users were asked to perform tasks using the prototype and two comparative tools. The method and prototype have been evaluated with respect to actual performance and users perceptions. The result shows actual effectiveness, perceived ease of use and usefulness comparing to other tools used in the experiment, as well as intention of the subjects to use the method in future. A discussion of future research directions and possible revisions of the method concludes the thesis.

No description available.

In this thesis, a requirements traceability model is proposed in order to make efficient and effective change request impact analysis. The proposed model is a requirements &ndash / requirements traceability model. There are several researches regarding software requirements traceability problem. The main problem of these researches is that the proposed solutions can not be applied to software industry with affordable changes. However, current literature begins to see that describing all the software requirements in a huge black box is not so much applicable to today&rsquo / s more dynamic and bigger software projects, especially regarding change management. The proposed traceability model tries to be a solution to these problems. Change requests and business rules are two important and popular terms for today&rsquo / s software industry. The traceability model consists of three types of software requirements: data definitions, business rules and use cases. The traceability model proposes bidirectional traces between these types. Data definitions, business rules and use cases are related to each other and they all should be seen as parts of a software system which should work together to make the software system work properly. Empirical investigation is made on a real industrial software project. These types were configured in order to match to the project specific needs in a reconfigurable way. Experimental results show that the traceability model has an acceptable degree of correctness.

No description available.

This master thesis has been carried out at Billerud AB in Skärblacka and Gruvön and at the Department of Science and Technology, University of Linköping. The purpose of this thesis work is to evaluate the new standardised IT system in comparison to the old systems in reference to create routines, models and working practices and to see how the daily work will be affected for the delivery coordinators. Billerud is a packaging paper company with four production sites located in Gruvön, Karlsborg, Skärblacka and Beetham (United Kingdom). The company’s sales organisation is made up of sales offices around the world. The thesis is based on the problem with differences in calculated and actual freight costs that have arisen over the years. Part of the study has therefore been aimed at reaching an understanding of why these differences occur. Freight cost data has been gathered from Billerud Skärblacka and Billerud Gruvön for the years 2005 and 2006. From this data the author has seen for himself that a problem exists but also that there might be a way to change the trend. The study then focused more on the current working practices and the forthcoming ones that will come with the implementation of the new IT system BonD. This system is meant to replace the IT systems of Billeruds four mills in 2007. The new IT system will shift focus to be more market oriented and hope is that working practices at the mills will be more unified. The study of the new system has shown that alterations need to be made, and they need be made rather quickly. There are aspects that initially are lost from the old system that could prove troublesome in the future. One of these aspects that the author fears will lead to a worse situation is the decrease in importance of roll numbers; traceability can become an issue if nothing is done to ensure that the current traceability is maintained and improved. A number of proposed measures for improving the working practices are stated in the recommendations. The main conclusion is that even though BonD will be an easier system to work with, largely depending on the user interface, there are factors and working practices that need to be changed in order facilitate the work of the delivery coordinators. With the difference in freight charges in mind, Billerud also needs to evaluate, review and revise the current freight charges allocated to their customers.

Submitted by Johnny Rodrigues (johnnyrodrigues@ufcg.edu.br) on 2017-09-13T17:33:44Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação Uma Abordagem para Representação e Rastreio de Artefatos - Dissertação - Arthur Marques.pdf: 3543236 bytes, checksum: 940b12e3ea8bc59723a107297df266fc (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-09-13T17:33:44Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação Uma Abordagem para Representação e Rastreio de Artefatos - Dissertação - Arthur Marques.pdf: 3543236 bytes, checksum: 940b12e3ea8bc59723a107297df266fc (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-12-15 / Rastreabilidade de Requisitos refere-se ao processo de rastreio de requisitos ao longo de todo o ciclo de vida de um software. Visto que um grande conjunto de informações é usado e produzido e tais devem ser rastreadas, ela é essencial ao processo de desenvolvimento de software. Não obstante, uma vez que a complexidade dos sistemas desenvolvidos cresce, a miríade de artefatos relacionados também cresce. Sendo assim, engenheiros de requisitos são encarregados de rastrear requisitos em diferentes níveis de abstrações. Neste contexto, vale ressaltar que não há um consenso acerca do processo de rastreabilidade e, como consequência, práticas de rastreabilidade de requisitos não podem ser unificadas em diferentes ambientes organizacionais. Propor uma abstração comum para rastreabilidade de requisitos e também identificar aspectos chave do processo de rastreabilidade são reconhecidos como notáveis tópicos de pesquisa dentre os grandes desafios da rastreabilidade de requisitos. Sendo assim, no presente trabalho, propomos uma Linguagem de Representação de Rastreabilidade (TRL), que provê abstrações para a rastreabilidade de requisitos. Tal linguagem é então explorada por um processo de rastreabilidade, centrado na mesma. Desta forma, ao discutirmos detalhadamente as fases do processo proposto, atores, responsabilidades, entradas e saídas esperadas bem como contratos e interfaces que regem tal processo, nós investigamos aspectos comuns do processo de rastreabilidade. A avaliação do presente trabalho considera que: (i) a representação proposta foi avaliada considerando critérios de legibilidade e redigibilidade, ou seja, quão compreensível ela é; e (ii) o processo proposto foi avaliado considerando sua performance e eficiência, isto é, quão bem o processo apoia atividades beneficiadas pela rastreabilidade de requisitos. Como resultados, observamos que a linguagem e suas construções foram avaliadas como de fácil leitura e escrita e que a linguagem é uma abordagem viável para abstrair rastreabilidade de requisitos. Além disso, observamos que o processo proposto possui melhor performance e eficiência quando comparado à um processo ad hoc. Dados os resultados observados, a abordagem proposta (linguagem e processo) fornece abstrações para o processo de rastreabilidade de requisitos bem como fomentar a discussão acerca dos principais aspectos do processo de rastreabilidade, desta forma, promovendo a rastreabilidade de requisitos portável. / Requirements Traceability (RT) refers to the process of tracing requirements through the software development life-cycle. It is essential for the software development process because a lot of information is used and produced and it should be kept related or traceable. Nevertheless , as the complexity of a system increases, themyriad of related artifacts also increases. Therefore, one is encumbered of tracing requirements through different abstraction levels. Moreover, there is not a consensus about the traceability process and, as a consequence, requirements traceability practices cannot be unified across different organizational settings. Proposing a common abstraction to requirements traceability and also identifying common aspects to the requirements traceability process have been recognized as remarkable research topics of the grand challenges of requirements traceability. Therefore, is this work, we propose a Traceability Representation Language (TRL), which provides abstractions to requirements traceability. Such representation is then exploited by a requirements traceability process centered on it. Thus, by thoroughly discussing process’ phases, activities, actors, responsibilities, and input/output artifacts as well as traceability contracts, which govern process’ phases and how they intercommunicate, we investigate common aspects of requirements traceability. The evaluation of the present work was twofold: (i) the proposed language was evaluated considering its readability and writability, i.e. how comprehensible it is; and (ii) the proposed process was evaluated regarding its performance and effectiveness, i.e. how well it supports requirements traceability tasks. As a result, we observed that the language’s constructions were evaluated as easily read/written and that it is a feasible approach to provide an abstraction to requirements traceability. Moreover,we observed that the proposed process improves the performance and efficiency of the requirements traceability process, while maintaining the same accuracy of other approaches. Therefore, the proposed approach (language and process) is feasible to address abstractions to requirements traceability as well as foster the discussion of major aspects of the requirements traceability process, thus portable traceability can be addressed, i. e. how requirements traceability techniques can be used across different projects or even organizations.

[pt] A confiabilidade dos resultados das medições é garantida por meio da rastreabilidade às unidades do Sistema Internacional de Unidades (SI). A cadeia de rastreabilidade dos padrões metrológicos dos diversos laboratórios de cada país é implantada, mantida e referenciada aos padrões internacionais pelos Institutos Nacionais de Metrologia (INM). No Brasil, apesar de uma demanda crescente originária de diversos setores (regulatório, industrial, serviços, etc.), a rastreabilidade de grandezas magnéticas não foi implantada. No presente trabalho é realizado levantamento da demanda nacional por rastreabilidade metrológica de grandezas magnéticas e caracterizadas as competências, iniciativas e infraestrutura nacionais já disponíveis. As iniciativas para realização das unidades SI de grandezas magnéticas já em implantação no INM apresentam a abrangência necessária ao atendimento das demandas regulatórias recentemente estabelecidas no país, mas não são suficientes para atender às faixas de intensidade e de frequência de densidade de fluxo magnético correspondentes às demandas identificadas nos setores da indústria e de pesquisa e desenvolvimento. / [en] The traceability to the International System of Units (SI) guarantees the reliability of measurement results. For each country, the metrological traceability chain to an international measurement standard is supported by the National Metrological Institute (NMI). Despite a growing demand from various sectors (regulatory, industrial, services, etc.), the traceability of magnetic quantities has not been implemented in Brazil. In the present work, the national demand for metrological traceability of magnetic measurement results is investigated; and the potential infrastructure and competencies already available are characterized. The measurement infrastructure presently being built for realization of the SI unit of magnetic flux density enables compliance to the regulatory requirements recently established, but it is not sufficient for the range of magnitudes and frequencies of this quantity that have been identified in other sectors, like Industry and Research e Development .