1. WOSOCER 2012
Enabling transfer of knowledge between industry
and academia: are we really able to?
GABRIELLA CARROZZA, Ph.D.

2. SESM
Advanced Decision Support and Knowledge Based Systems
in the field of Air Traffic Management, Defence and Logistic Support
The Company
Founded in 1990, SESM Soluzioni Evolute per la
Sistemistica e i Modelli s.c.a.r.l. is a no-profit private
research centre part of Finmeccanica Group with the
following share:
• SELEX Sistemi Integrati S.p.A. (90%)
• SELEX Galileo S.p.A. (10%)
SELEX Sistemi Integrati and SELEX Galileo are two Italian
companies of Finmeccanica Group, operating in the
development of Large Systems for Homeland Protection, Air
Traffic Control, Coastal and Maritime Surveillance.
SESM promotes and manages research projects co-funded
by European Commission, by the MIUR (Italian University
and Research Ministry) and by the Italian Regions (local
government), with particular interest in in the fields of air
traffic management, defense and logistic support for
reliability and availability of Systems of Systems

3. SESM Facts & Figures
Ricerca di research
Base base
Highly qualified people: 3%
Applied
Ricerca applicata
research
• Almost 120 employees across two 31%
premises 33%
Investment
Investimenti PT
• Average age 35 years
• Over 30 academic researchers, thesis Pre-
competitive
students and scholarship holders Sviluppo
development
Precompetitivo
average present.
• 50 papers to International conferences
3% Industrial
Sviluppo industiale
development
and journals in the last 5 years 30%
• Knowledge hub between university and Employees Qualifications
industry.
• Partnership with more than 20 european
universities.
Mission
24%
88%
• SESM mission is to act as research and 76%
precompetitive development centre, to
consolidate the position of privileged hub
12%
between University and Industry, with the
objective to create a net of transversal
competences and a group of qualified Post degree
Graduate
people for Shareholders needs. High school
Graduate

4. OUR SHAREHOLDERS MARKET & SOLUTION
AIRBORNE MISSION ATC/ATM & AIRPORT VTMIS & ADVANCED I.T. FOR SECURITY,
SYSTEMS SYSTEMS MARITIME AWARNESS LOGISTICS AND AUTOMATION
AIRBORNE, SURVEILLANCE & SECURITY SYSTEMS
Consolidated world leader in Land and Naval radar sensors
Key global player in Naval Combat System Integration,
C4I and Air Defense Systems and Air Traffic Control Systems
4
World major player in Large Systems for Homeland Defense and Security

5. THEIR NUMBERS
ABOUT 25% OF ITS TURNOVER
INVESTED IN R&D IN 2011 Germany
UK
Italy
USA Saudi Arabia
Venezuela UAE
Nerviano
Yemen
Brazil
La Spezia Kenia
Genoa
Malaysia
Rome
Giugliano
Taranto
Fusaro
Revenues 765 €Million
Backlog 1,600 €Million
Employees 4,400
5
FINMECCANICA SELEX SISTEMI INTEGRATI ATC & ATP LAND NAVAL C4I SECURITY LOGISTICS

6. CRITICAL SOFTWARE, SYSTEMS AND INFRASTRUCTURE
• Software represents an horizontal business pillar
• Strict dependability requirements
• Safety & Security standards
– D0178-B
– CMMI 3
• Huge variety of (sw) systems
• Middleware
• HMI & High Level Application
• Radar system software
• Advanced Combat Management Console
• Complex solutions
– Legacy systems
– Integrated (C)OTS

7. The role of SW Integration,
Verification and Validation (IV&V)
• Dependability and quality threats coming from SW integration
– Additional sources of failures due to errors propagation among modules
– Transient manifestation of software failures
– Operational environment hard to reproduce
• IV&V becomes crucial in all the phases of SLC ( Sw Life Cycle)
- Requirements engineering
- Design
- Implementation
- Testing
• …aiming to
– Check software quality from different levels
– Address the as many bugs as possible before operational phase
– Minimize residual faults during operational phase
• Along three main directions
– Test granularity
– Testing techniques
– Testing tools

8. The need for a reference (V-) model
• Complexity and high criticality
– ask for a rigorous industrial process
• Documentation
• Responsibility allocation among different teams
• “Consolidated” tools and practices
– Unmask model dependability holes
• Very frequent delays due to the basic waterfall approach
• Unbalanced effort distribution effort across the different phases to respect
milestone plans
• Lack of cooperation and gap among designers/ developers/testers teams

9. …and its drawbacks
• Rigorous should not mean unflexible!
– Huge effort in producing heavy documentation
– Difficulties in going backward in the process
• No risk management strategies to mitigate delays
– Design “bugs” propagate into code and tests prior to surface
– Late code deliveries result into shortened testing phases
• Start too late
– Integration reveals many bugs that could have been discovered / fixed during
component level testing
– Bad surprises on site due to inaccurate testing campaigns in-house
» Crazy company costs increase!!!
• Lay down NFRs testing campaigns that should rather be improved for
such critical application scenarios
– They are not a practice indeed

10. Therein lies the rub!
• Despite of the Intensive effort devoted to IV&V, accounting for the
50% of the complete software production, delivered solutions still
do not exhibit the expected quality and reliability level
• Why ??
– No room for NFRs extensive testing campaigns
• Load and stress testing
• Robustness testing
• Operational scenarios reproduction in-house
– No time for fault injection based exercises
• To stimulate system failures
• To feed failure prevention strategies definition
– Limited budget for infrastructure and technology investments
• Testing environments virtualization
• Cloud computing to support distributed testing
– No time for dedicated training, hence lack of skills
– Technology resistance
– Legacy solutions “ghost”

11. Promoting the TOK
Ph.D.
NFR TESTING
R&D
Associa
tions
EFFORT ALLOCATION
STRATEGIES
ACADE
MIA
RESEARCH &
INNOVATION TECHNOLOGY
SCOUTING
INFRASTRUCTURE
INVESTIGATION
EU
Projects
FAILURE PREDCTION
National
grants
FAIULT DIAGNOSIS

12. Feeding the TOK
REQUIREMENTS INDUSTRIES STAKEH
OLDERS
CASE STUDIES
REAL SYSTEMS
PROCESSES
STANDAR
DIZATION
BODIES
VALIDATION CERTIFIC
PLATFORMS ATION
ENTITIES
FIELD DATA &
NEEDS

13. Innovation HUB
NFR TESTING REQUIREMENTS
CASE STUDIES
EFFORT ALLOCATION
STRATEGIES
TECHNOLOGY PROCESSES
SCOUTING
INFRASTRUCTURE
INVESTIGATION
VALIDATION
PLATFORMS
FAILURE PREDCTION
FIELD DATA &
NEEDS
FAIULT DIAGNOSIS

14. SESM as Open Innovation Hub: our model
needs
Italian European
nds
projects,
Real world Requirements
fu
Competitive
advantage
Academia
Open research
groups
Selection Innovative Improved
Modeling
and solutions Market
Engineeri Solutions
Market, Innovative Acquisition Verification
products of and ng
quality
Innovation Rapid Prototype
Prototyping
R&D Associations
ideas Technology scouting Agile methodologies
application
Real world feedback for new ideas and projects

15. SESM “University-Industry” R&D collaboration
and scholarships project
In 2005 SESM has coordinated a number of
scholarships funded by Finmeccanica, with the aim
of:
• promoting the collaboration with Italian
Universities
• grant the education of students (Master thesis
and/or PhD students)
• improve the exchange of innovation and R&D
findings sharing.
Scholarships have been realised under the “Centro
Ricerche Radar” and “Iniziativa Software”
umbrella.
9 Italian Universities have been involved as well as
main companies from the FINMECCANICA group
(Selex SI, Selex Galileo, Elsag Datamat, Ansaldo
STS, Ansaldo Breda).
The scholarships will end in 2013.
As main result of the study the “U-I” collaboration model performed by FINMECCANICA
has been identified and a book based on the presentation and discussion of this model
has been published

16. Glad to answer
your questions!
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