How a partnership with Zircon supports an industrial technology manufacturer on its software transformation journey

High-end manufacturing equipment usually comes with software that controls its moving parts and monitors for problems. All too often, such software is developed in silos by product teams, with layers of code piled on top of each other. That leads to overly complex architectures that are hard to maintain and upgrade, and which require complex integrations with customer infrastructure.

As companies digitise, many want to reinvent their software architecture so they can offer suites of smart connected products that capture real-time product usage data which can be used to deliver added value insights and automation tools to customers, and support ‘as-a-service’ billing models. But the reality is that any such transformation must deal with a vast legacy of software that was not designed for this purpose.

This was the challenge faced by a developer of high-end industrial vacuum pumps for the semiconductor industry. It was making a big investment in a new generation of pumps with significantly increased functionality, and which were smaller, lighter, and easier to produce. They wanted a robust software architecture that would support these pumps long into the future. But, it also had pumps in the field that would be used for many more years, so it needed to ensure that existing pump software was maintained and worked well within this new system.

The company’s first interaction with Zircon was a business consultancy project to assess plans for the new software architecture – to ensure it didn’t overlook anything that would cause problems later.

Zircon spent time talking to the people involved, not just the software teams but the people who would be selling the pumps, maintaining them, and using them. Zircon’s consultants sought to understand not just the technical side, but what the software needed to achieve in the real world.

For example, a concern was raised about whether it would work with existing product testing centres – which had recently been upgraded at great cost. That led to a recognition that the new software architecture needed to be designed for current testing processes, or it would add significant costs and deployment delays.

“These products exist in a real ecosystem of people, products and processes,” says Sebastian Hinds, Business Analyst at Zircon. “It’s easy for software teams to get carried away trying to design the best product on paper, but that can often fall over when it hits physical reality. If you understand the ecosystem, business challenges and impact on real people, if you take their fears into account, you avoid mistakes and end up with a better product.”

Having identified the key business drivers for the project, and evaluated benefits and risks of the proposed architectural solutions, Zircon conducted an in-depth audit of the software that the company currently used to control and support its pumps That included an analysis of documented requirements, designs, and test procedures for existing pump software, and an evaluation of the source code against industry standard metrics.

The result of all this was to deliver two product development roadmap options to the client, which met their organisational objectives whilst addressing possible concerns.

As development started, the technical complexity of working with both the new and legacy software became clear.

The company needed to ensure that some elements of the legacy software were replicated in the new product, to allow it to integrate with testing and customer infrastructure. They also planned to move support and maintenance of the legacy software to East Asia, to free up experienced software engineers to focus on next generation products.

But they lacked a technical description of the existing software, making both goals very difficult. To address this, Zircon needed to define the software architecture.

“The software was typical of software found in products that started life before digital became a strategic priority,” says Hinds. “In other words, it was overengineered and needed highly experienced people for even simple maintenance”. To make the job even harder, knowledge had been lost by the natural turnover of development staff over the years, as happens in many companies where products are active for a long time. The loss of key staff, combined with the lack of detailed documentation identified in the audit, resulted in the Zircon team identifying a need to look directly at the source code to access the “source of truth”.

This was a very technically complex project, but one which our software specialists jumped at, creating documentation that could be used in new product development, and to develop standardised maintenance and testing processes.

This was a big strategic transformation project. But no plan survives first contact, and the reality was that urgent challenges arose along the way, as specific coding issues needed to be addressed to meet product launch timelines.

At times, the client called upon the Zircon team to shift resources onto specific coding projects to help them overcome problems and keep development on track.

“The close relationship with the client and deep understanding of their software architecture means that we can quickly shift resources when needed to help with urgent challenges”, says Hinds, “whilst still maintaining the knowledge to return to supporting the bigger strategic long-term projects as needed”.

And changes of direction were not always one way. Thanks to the close relationship and deep understanding of the business and software, Zircon was able to routinely push the client to think about new possibilities.

“For example, one of our software engineers is a big advocate of simulation for testing control software,” says Hinds. “He had this idea for a pump control simulation tool, and off his own bat he created a prototype framework that could speed up development time, and lay the groundwork for automated testing of the final product. The client liked it and asked us to develop it further.”

Like any long-term partnership, the work is never complete. But from our work to date, the client has the most complicated parts of their software documented, and they can use that information anywhere, whether for training maintenance teams, for building new systems that integrate with old ones, or as a basis for automated testing.

“They also have a partner in Zircon” concludes Hinds, “with an in-depth understanding of their complex software environment, and who can be bought in at short notice to progress their software architecture development along the strategic roadmap, or to problem solve when day-to-day challenges arise”.

Looking for a team to support your next Rail software venture?  Zircon is there to help you ensure project success, contact the team today.