Product Development & Management

2023 Predictions for Industrial and Consumer Electronics Product Development

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Industrial and Consumer Electronics

As we enter 2023, Jama Software® asked selected thought leaders – both internal Jama Software employees and our external partners – across various industries for the trends and events they foresee unfolding over the next year and beyond.

In the third part of our five-part series, we asked Beau-Colby Thomson – Associate Account Executive at Jama Software – Vlad Tanasescu – Global Industrial Sales Lead at Jama Software – and Steven Meadows – Principal Solutions Lead at Jama Software – to weigh in on Industrial and Consumer Electronics (ICE) product and systems development trends they’re anticipating in 2023.

Click the following links to visit part 1 – 2023 Predictions for Product & Systems Development Teams – and part 2 – 2023 Predictions for Aerospace & Defense Product Development. We will link the remaining 2023 Industry Predictions as they are published.

2023 Predictions for Industrial and Consumer Electronics Product Development

What product, systems, and software development trends are you expecting to take shape in 2023 as it pertains to the ICE industry?

Beau-Colby Thomson: Industrial robotics and automation adoption will continue to grow at a rapid pace to combat labor shortages and growing product demand.

Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) + edge computing use cases are growing year over year. This will introduce complex software development to product lines that historically may have been mostly hardware + firmware. The addition of a new discipline into product development organizations may result in disruptions to existing processes.

Energy Storage continues to be an area of focus for the world. As more utility infrastructures fail and the cost of renewable energy decreases, the demand for energy storage systems will grow.

Fusion/Fission/Nuclear is becoming more widely accepted (more so in Europe than in North America). The development of these products takes many years at a time to complete, however the headcount of the engineering organizations for these companies continues to grow now.

Steven Meadows: The Internet of Things (IoT) continues to become more prevalent across all industries. Everyday consumer electronics like laptops, home appliances, and tablets are manufactured with an increasing number of sensors and inputs that transfer data to different networks and applications. Improved remote monitoring of these systems can also be enabled through IoT helping customers to maintain their products with ease.

Cloud computing also continues to grow across the software industry. Cloud is becoming the golden standard allowing for more flexible, cheaper, and sustainable solutions. Companies increasingly rely on cloud computing for projects and daily activities, without the need for managing system administration, upgrades, and security.

DevOps is constantly evolving with more companies utilizing a unified software development approach, allowing for code to be delivered faster with improved quality. This means there is less time spent on the integration of teams, infrastructure management, and the deployment of code. Product managers continue to push for the implementation of DevOps, finding it critical to deliver their products at a lower cost, and with better quality outcomes.

Vlad Tanasescu:

  • Robotics: autonomous factories, warehouse and delivery robots, AgriRobots (agriculture), humanoids.
  • IoT: smart homes/cities, connected devices, antennas, remote controlling.
  • Digitalization of the railway industry.
  • Smart energy solutions, especially given the current energy crisis.
  • Digitalized heavy machinery.

RELATED: ISO 26262 Second Edition Introduces Updates to Functional Safety in Road Vehicles

In terms of product and systems development, what do you think will remain the same over the next decade? What will change?

Thomson: The increasing level of connected products will drive more systems development maturity in organizations that fall under Industrial, Consumer Electronics, and Energy (ICE).

I believe over the next decade the struggle with writing ”good” requirements will not change.

Tanasescu: What will remain the same?

  • More software (SW) in systems, intelligence and autonomy in systems.
  • More autonomy.
  • Focus on smart / green energy (wind farms, etc.)
  • Innovation within roboticsand IoT.

What will change?

  • Functional Safety will become more important for industrial products.
  • New regulations will be introduced for robots as the technology evolves.

Meadows: Product development companies will continue to invest heavily in digital platforms which will help to streamline their processes, improve quality of their products, and improve team collaboration. Excel and Word are antiquated solutions that do not give product teams the necessary capabilities to handle complex development, so requirement solutions and Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) tools will continue to see an uptick in investment going forward.

There will continue to be an emphasis placed on functional safety with the functional safety devices market set to hit $10 billion by 2030. This means teams will need to prioritize functional safety throughout their development process to ensure that products are safe for industrial or private use. Development companies will continue to invest in the certification of their products, conforming to functional safety standards such as IEC 61508. This gives vendors and customers increased confidence in the overall quality of their manufactured systems.

RELATED: IEC 61508 Overview: The Complete Guide for Functional Safety in Industrial Manufacturing

How do you foresee regulations shifting in ICE product and Systems Development over the next decade?

Thomson: We will definitely see more safety regulations imposed as products are introduced to the real world and unforeseen risks occur. I believe these will be both safety and cybersecurity related regulations.

This is mostly for automated technologies and energy products, potentially cybersecurity for connected consumer tech or IIOT applications.

Tanasescu: More dedicated FuSa (functional safety) standard will appear for robots, IoT devices, and autonomous systems as these technologies become more embedded in society.

Requirements engineering, traceability, risk analysis will become increasingly important.

Any major disruptions to the ICE product and systems development industry you’re anticipating in 2023?

Thomson: The predicted recession may have an impact on consumer spending therefore consumer technology development. Companies may also be reducing funding to innovative R&D or incubation projects.

Tanasescu: I’m not sure about 2023, but I believe that over the next 10 years the robotics sector will grow exponentially.

Over the next years the traditional home appliance manufacturers will need to become IoT companies and focus on connected devices.

What sorts of process adjustments do you think development teams will need to make to be successful in 2023?

Thomson: Standardization & maturity.

Tanasescu: Work as agile as possible, even in regulated fields, while maintaining engineering rigor. Embrace a best-of-breed tooling approach. Enable collaboration across many global stakeholders.

RELATED: Considering DOORS® for requirements management? There is a more modern solution.

What do you think will be some of the differentiators between a company surviving to see 2030, and those that do not?

Thomson: The ability to achieve executive initiatives to get products to market quicker while minimizing defects found after launch

Tanasescu: Investment in engineering. Understanding the value of structure and measurable product definition. Understanding of the future trends and the importance of software driven & connected devices, autonomous systems and digitalization.

Meadows: Development companies need to embrace a proactive approach to safety and quality when developing their systems. By incorporating functional safety throughout the product lifecycle, companies are much more likely to release safe and market leading products. These companies, and their customers, will experience greater long-term benefits than those companies that manage their safety and quality processes reactively.

By educating development teams on how to define requirements from the stakeholder level down to component, companies will have a better chance of building exactly what they intend to. By incorporating AI to help with requirements definition, teams can gain a competitive edge and author requirements in a concise and meaningful way.

What advice would you give to new companies entering the ICE industry?

Thomson: Build your house on bricks, not sticks. Leverage as much outside expertise/tools and focus your engineer’s efforts on innovation.

Tanasescu: Start with a structured, process driven approach when it comes to the use of development tools and traceability processes early on to best enable scale across the development programs, as the business will grow.

Meadows: When entering the industrial and consumers electronics industry, there are a lot of areas to consider when it comes to product development. Primarily, new companies should educate themselves on applicable standards and product development best practices. They should also consider certification in different areas including functional safety to make their products more marketable across a broader range of geographies and customer profiles.

What topic(s) do you wish companies were paying more attention to?

Thomson: It would be ideal if companies analyzed their engineering deficiencies and understood the amount of capital that gets wasted money in product development.

Tanasescu: Engineering predictability. Advantages of using a best –of-breed toolchain.

Where do you see Jama Software fitting in as the product development landscape evolves, and what can our customers expect as 2023 approaches?

Thomson: Hopefully as an integral part of the best of breed landscape. The biggest expectation we can point our customers towards is our ability to measure project health through traceability and requirement scores.

Tanasescu: Jama Software will continue accelerating the time to market efforts of ICE companies, make development more predictable and measure product development efficiency. Jama Connect® will keep enabling ICE innovators to succeed globally. I see Jama Connect as an expert in complex requirements engineering, traceability in systems engineering which serves its customers as a trusted innovation partner.

Our customers can expect continuous investment in and commitment to our product and ICE industry solutions.

Meadows: As systems become more complex with increased connectivity between interfaces and networks, the need for a best-in-breed product development platform that enables Live Traceability™ is critical. Gone are the days when teams could get by documenting requirements, tests, and risks in Excel and Word.

To speed time to market, produce better and safer products, teams need to adopt digital solutions, giving them a competitive advantage. Jama Software continues to invest heavily in its core platform, Jama Connect. We have been incorporating AI capabilities to improve requirements authoring, enhancing integration options with other best in breed applications and always bringing out new capabilities to support the development of some of the most complex devices on the market today.

Decoteau Wilkerson
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