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Exploiting your data well

Based on our research, we’ve developed a four-dimensional model for the digital transformation in the software-intensive embedded systems industry. In the last two posts, we explored the business model and product upgrade dimensions. This post is concerned with the data exploitation dimension.

As shown in the figure, the first step in most companies is focused on the use of data for quality assurance and diagnostics. In this case, the data often arrives at the company in batches and through customer complaints. In response to a complaint, company representatives download the data and investigate whether the system behaved incorrectly and seek to identify the root cause. Many companies have been using this type of data for decades.

Evolving use of data

The second step is the use of data to monitor product performance and feature usage. This form of data collection is typically introduced in combination with the more frequent deployment of software. Monitoring product performance allows the company to confirm that the product is performing well after a software upgrade. Measuring feature usage allows for more informed prioritization of R&D resources by ensuring that research and development predominantly focus on improving features that are actually used by customers.

As we now have a continuous stream of data from each customer, we can move to the third stage where we can start to collect data relevant for the customer. Each customer has KPIs for which the organization optimizes, including churn in subscription service companies, measuring service usage by end-customers or classifying end-customers into segments that require different treatments. As the company now collects significant amounts of data from each customer, it can process and analyze that data and offer relevant insights to each customer.

'The next step is to provide relevant comparative data to each customer'

Finally, in the last stage, the company engages a second business ecosystem where it monetizes data collected from its primary customer base with a secondary customer base. For instance, a truck company could sell route information of the trucks in use at its customers to gas station and road service companies. Or, a telecom company could sell aggregate movement patterns of mobile phone users to city planners.

Once the company reaches the final stage, the data that’s collected in its products deployed at its primary customer base now is increasingly concerned with meeting the needs of the secondary customer base. So, the company is likely to start collecting data that has no relevance at all for its primary customer base but that is relevant for the secondary one. A second aspect is that the company can use the revenue from the secondary customer base to subsidize the products to its primary customer base and, through that, grow its market share. Many industries, as digitalization takes hold, move towards a “winner takes all” situation and this pattern of positive feedback cycles lies at the root of it.

Concluding, digitalization has implications for the business model, the way we upgrade products and the way that we collect, use and monetize data. Companies evolve in predictable and repeatable patterns through this transformation and in this post, I described the five typical stages we encounter in our research. Data is the new oil, but if you’re not able to generate business value from your data, it doesn’t do you much good. So, get going on experimenting with different ways to create value from your data!

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Better all the time

In last week’s post, I mentioned our framework describing the transformation that companies go through when going digital. I also discussed one of its four dimensions – the business model dimension. In this post, the focus is on the product upgrade dimension.

As shown in the figure, we’ve identified five steps or phases in the transformation from a traditional to a digital company. In the first stage, the company focuses on selling a physical product. It’s sold ‘as is’ and except for warranty issues, the company spends no time or resources on it once it has left the factory. The product may well include electronics and software, but these subsystems are treated in the same way as the mechanical parts.

Evolution of product upgrades as part of the digital transformation.

As a second step, many companies set out to offer their product as a service to certain customer segments. This often starts as a mechanism to expand the clientele. Especially potential customers that don’t need the product all the time or that have issues financing the capex may need a service offering in order to become customers. In this step, the company often starts to offer periodic upgrades to the product software – predominantly to protect itself from unwanted downsides. In service contracts, there typically are service level agreements (SLAs) and software upgrades can be used to decrease the risk of violating these SLAs and avoid the associated penalties.

In the third step, the company has, from a business perspective, started to offer complementary services around the product. Frequently, the quality and appeal of these services can be improved if the core product has updated software functionality. In this case, the company upgrades the software in its products not only to protect from any downside issues, but also to create an upside in terms of additional revenue from complementary services. As a simple example, an automotive company may upgrade the software to provide an API for querying the location of a vehicle that can be used by complementary services to offer more relevant information for the context in which the vehicle and the driver may find themselves.

'The easiest way to positively drive KPIs is to deploy new software versions'

Finally, the concept of a physical product is completely replaced with its digital alter ego. In this case, all parts of the product can be upgraded on a periodic basis, with software being the most frequent and mechanics the least frequent. Even replacing the complete physical product is done as part of the continuous improvement of the digital product. As an example, although Apple most certainly makes the money on the physical product, from a user experience perspective, there’s a constantly improving experience that has small upward bumps when replacing the phone with a new model, but by and large, the improvement of the product is a continuous one.

Concluding, the digital transformation is a complex, multi-dimensional challenge that affects all parts of the company, including the way products get upgraded. Although this may seem like a technical challenge, it’s the business strategy that (should) drive the architecture and technology decisions that either allow for or prohibit the product upgrades discussed here. With business models increasingly moving from transactional to continuous, the product that’s being monetized by the business model needs to become continuous in terms of it constantly improving the user experience and value delivery to customers. One can’t exist without the other!

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One and a half metres Sysarch successfully completed

In the week of 8 to 12 June High Tech Institute organized its first one and a half metres Sysarch training in Zwolle. The intensive week for system architects led by Luud Engels was originally on the agenda last March, but was postponed to this month.

Coincidentally, this was the first Sysarch with open registration in the North of the Netherlands. It was a nice bonus that training location BCN – with a view of the NS railway station in Zwolle – is spacious. The wide corridors and large classrooms offered sufficient space to carry out the corona rules practically well.

Everyone knows that the current circumstances occasionally cause some uncomfortable encounters: a colleague who almost runs into you because he or she is just around the corner or who wants to come through the same door. At BCN the tightness was limited to the narrow stairwell. Only one person was allowed in the elevator at a time. In practice it was not that bad, especially since we were about the only guests.

Personally, I found it especially a disadvantage that lunch was served in the training room. Anyone who wanted to stretch their legs had to stand in the classroom or walk around the block. At BCN they always serve an excellent lunch, so it’s a pity to have to miss the extensive meal choice this time.

Furthermore, the usefulness and nonsense of specific measures and possible solutions in a corona crisis naturally lead to pleasant discussions – something that system architects naturally excel at.

Classroom at BCN Zwolle with a setting for 10 participants and 1 trainer in times of COVID-19 measurements. 

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Baptism by Fire for online Dynamics and Modeling

Dynamics and modeling training with a green screen
Adrian Rankers and Hans Vermeulen had a sudden challenge when ASML Wilton insisted on providing the planned four-day Dynamics and Modeling training online. Rankers started working with green screen, Open Broadcaster Software, a camcorder, and document camera and after taking countless bumps and hard lessons learned, the training was successfully completed a month later.

In this article, Rankers of Mechatronics Academy and co-trainer Vermeulen share their experience on how to roll out a highly practice-oriented training course full of exercises online. They talk about the considerations, choices and tricky bumps, as well as about their experience with an ultimately very successful session of Dynamics and Modeling. They didn’t hold back their comments either.

Dynamics and Modeling revolves around the many aspects that influence the performance of mechatronic precision systems. In order to get that knowledge into your head, participants in the training should mainly work with exercises. One way this is achieved is by giving putting participants to work using the design tool 20-sim. “They do this in groups of two or three, with us looking over their shoulders,” says Hans Vermeulen, senior principal architect of EUV Optics System at ASML and part-time professor at TU Eindhoven. This need for intensive interaction between participants and trainers is a big reason why the training was never offered online before.

Last May, Dynamics and Modeling was scheduled for twenty ASML employees in Wilton, Connecticut. But when the first measures against corona came into force, travelling to the US was no longer possible for Rankers and Vermeulen. To guarantee the quality, they proposed to postpone the training until the autumn. However, the machine builder insisted: the technical experts in Wilton really felt the need to obtain the knowledge. That’s when the duo decided to wring the four-day course into an online format.

Check out the training
Better connection between ppt-slide and speaker

Coincidentally, Rankers had recently taken part in a conference that the American Society for Precision Engineering was forced to hold in Zoom. He was pleased with the design and quality. However, his trainer-senses also noted a disadvantage. “It was very tiring for me to look at a powerpoint with a moving mouse and a presenter that was only visible in a small window,” he says.

Dynamics and Modeling
Adrian Rankers for a green screen during the Dynamics and Modeling training. Top left the camera for recording trainer and green screen, bottom right the document camera.

Reflecting on the upcoming course, Rankers realized that it is much more fun to watch a video stream where the teacher is visible from the waist up next to the presentation. “This creates a better relationship between the slide and the speaker explaining the information.”

Rankers looked around and saw three options to achieve this. It is possible to project a powerpoint on a wall and video stream the teacher plus projection with a camera. You can do the same with a large TV screen.

The third option was to put the instructor in front of a well-lit green screen, cut him loose using software and then mount him in the powerpoint presentation and share that stream via Zoom or Teams. Just like the weatherman on the NOS news, the trainer has to coordinate his instructions via his own screen.

Experimenting with green screen and OBS

Rankers decided to experiment with green screen and Open Broadcaster Software (OBS). He borrowed a large green tablecloth from a friend and hung it over a telescopic handle for garden tools. Photo shops already sell good green screen cloths for 30 euro. But because they were all sold out, instead it became a 4 by 6 meter cloth for 80 euros – also reasonably affordable.

Green screen & Open Broadcaster Software
Through this screen Adrian Rankers coordinated his movements with the information on the powerpoint slides.

His first experiment with the tablecloth already worked “surprisingly well.” Rankers noticed that it was the exposure that counted. “If you go for Hollywood quality, seeing every hair of the presenter, it comes close. My wood and rope setup worked surprisingly well in sufficient daylight, especially when you consider that a lot of detail is lost in video streaming to the other side of the world anyway.” As a backup, he checked the available large-screen TVs in a nearby shop.

Because of the time difference, the training for ASML Wilton required afternoon and evening sessions, so Rankers also wanted to test the lighting conditions in the evening. “I figured this might be an issue,” he says. “From the information on the internet I concluded that evening shots were really different. Without good artificial light, the software doesn’t properly cut the person out of the green background.”

The nocturnal farewell drink at a distance at the end of an ASPE conference at MIT gave Rankers the opportunity to briefly test and experiment with it. Surprisingly, it turned out to work with the available artificial light in the space that Mechatronics Academy and High Tech Institute had set up at the Fellenoord location in Eindhoven. “I’ve had a lot of positive reactions and agreed with MIT pro Dave Trumper that I would share our first course experiences with him.”

Whiteboard and document camera

During their physical training Rankers and Vermeulen write a lot on a flipchart or whiteboard. Teams (which was chosen at the request of ASML) offers the possibility to write with the mouse, but that gave problems. In trials Rankers conducted in preparation with ASML Wilton, it was reported that participants could not use their whiteboard function. They also couldn’t share their own screen. The whiteboard problem was confirmed by Microsoft and appeared to be related to (GDPR) privacy rules.

That’s why Rankers on the trainer-side immediately sought refuge with a document camera. “A document camera is similar to a webcam on a tripod, which is aimed at a sheet of A4,” explains Rankers. “This can be easily autofocused on the paper at the touch of a button and then hold this setting. If you’re going to write, that’s fine. It’s not going to be disturbed by, say, autofocus on your hand.”

Dynamics Modeling
Both the trainer and his co-trainer have a screen on which you can see the image that is also presented to the participants.

Rankers and Vermeulen were both very satisfied with the document camera. “But switching between them is one of the minuses,” says Vermeulen. “In a physical training course, participants see everything side by side: powerpoint, whiteboard and trainer. Now they only saw our pen on the paper. If we switched to presentation, they’d have lost that image again.”

Rankers adds that entering an additional camera signal “still requires some dexterity” because of the switching between applications, presentations and the document camera. “That’s a bit more complicated because of the combi green screen and OBS,” he thinks. Especially switching to an application like 20-sim takes some practice. Operating the computer tool via a monitor a few meters away from you was not easy. As a double check, Rankers invited himself via private email so that he could see on his mobile phone at all times what the students had in view.

Data rate prioritized

A point of attention was the internet speed at High Tech Institute on location Fellenoord. This could be a potential bottleneck. The common throughput speed of all tenants together turned out to be only 100 Mb/s, while for a video stream 5 Mb/s is quickly needed. It turned out that the IT department wanted to give one IP address a higher priority for four days.

Rankers says, with a small sigh, that the people in Wilton, like his students at the TUE, only started installing 20-sim in the weekend before the training. “That didn’t go well because of the security of their ASML laptops,” says Rankers. The result was a lot of email communication just before the training and an escalation to the IT helpdesk to facilitate the final installations. “Next time, I’m really going to call everyone a week in advance and check on the preparation,” he laughs.

Rankers had made five short introductory videos for 20-sim and sent them in advance to teach the participants all the essentials of the tooling. In the future, he plans to add a video with the latest checks and send it well in advance. “So they know what we expect as basic knowledge.”

Interaction with the students

In the training setting Rankers and Vermeulen used a laptop with two external monitors. At an angle under the monitor with the constructed video image was also a second external monitor on which the Teams-meeting was shown.

In the training, in which everyone participated from home, most students unfortunately did not have a webcam. Rankers had also noticed that the connection would not work as well if everyone turned on their camera. That’s why they finally chose to only switch on the available webcams during the proposal round. “We didn’t see students, just the glowing balls with initials when questions were asked.”

'Online, you could easily log the participation in order to more specifically encourage some people to participate.'

Initially, Rankers asked the students to respond via the chat function and by raising their hands when they were in the picture. “Chat in itself worked well, but leaves little room for extensive discourse,” he says. “Hand-raising requires the presenter or his companion to be very alert, and that wasn’t always the case. In the end, after the first part of the day, we agreed that everyone would just interrupt and ask questions through their microphone. That worked well. There was a lot of interaction, but just like in an ordinary classroom, some stay quiet with a wait-and-see approach .” According to Rankers, there is still room for improvement. “Online, you could easily log the participation in order to more specifically encourage some people to participate.”

Practical exercises online

In the exercises, participants worked with teams that changed each day. Sometimes in pairs, sometimes in groups of four or five. In doing so, Rankers and invite Vermeulen to watch. Rankers: “There was good discussion within the groups, but there is still room for improvement in the guidance”. Vermeulen: “During an in-person training, you watch along and see immediately if the screen gets stuck. What we found is that online, participants didn’t speak up to let us know when it froze. It worked better with groups of four or five people than with couples,” describes Vermeulen. According to him, “Larger groups also work better online because there are always a number of people among them who are a bit more experienced and who pull the other along with them.”


Online training with a co-trainer on standby was a pleasant experience for Rankers and Vermeulen.

Rankers and Vermeulen alternated every hour and a half. In addition, they noticed that training is pleasant when someone is on standby. “Presenting the whole thing takes some getting used to. It’s really nice with two people.” Rankers also has training sessions in which he uses a different teacher every part of the day. “Then you actually always need someone to instruct and deal with calamities.”

The duo was largely spared the latter. During the four days, Rankers and Vermeulen had to do a hard restart only once, because the system got stuck. In the end, Rankers concluded that they had completed a successful edition, “with a lot of ideas to do it even better and perhaps simpler.”

Four afternoons and evenings of Dynamics and Modeling are intensive for Vermeulen. In the evening around 11 p.m. at home, preparing course in the morning while his children also asked for attention now and then. “It’s second best,” he says when asked to choose between an on-site training and saving a tiring journey. “Being there live is by far my preference,” he says. “Especially with all the exercises. I can imagine that you can give a very good training online. We do that in college. But a lot of interaction requires physical presence. I think for one or two days of training I would opt for online, for four or five days, I would choose to take the penalty of flying six hours there and six hours back. For Asia, online training is difficult because of the time difference, unless both teachers and students make concessions. At our upcoming online design principles training for ITRI in Taiwan, shortly after the summer holidays, we will start extra early in the morning on our side and the students will continue in their time zone in the evening until 22.00 hours”.

The evaluation of the first online training Dynamics and Modeling showed very satisfied participants. Apart from the remark whether this intensive training might not have been better given in five days, the students were full of praise afterwards. Below is a selection of the category ‘general remarks’ from the evaluations:

  • “Lecturers are very experienced and have vast knowledge on these topics. I find this training very useful and a nice summary on multiple topics. It is a pity that the training was online, I feel like in person training would benefit all and it would be even better than it was.”
  • “At times there were technological challenges. I do wonder if Zoom would have worked better.”
  • “Intensive content, but very good learning experience with down to earth explanation. Thanks.”
  • “The virtual setup was fairly successful, with very few disruptions. Overall a success!”
  • “Great training overall — excellent instructors & good use of physical ‘case studies’ to illustrate concepts”
  • “It would have been better if the training was given in 5-day time period instead of compressed 4-day period. There was a lot of good material. It would have helped to absorb that material better over 5-day period. It would also have given time to spend more time on the in-class exercises.”
  • “Very practical training with the correct mix of theory and fundamental content. Very well delivered by the presenter.”

 


Hans Vermeulen (l) and Adrian Rankers are catching a breath during the break.

This article is written by René Raaijmakers, tech editor of High-Tech Systems.

Recommendation by former participants

By the end of the training participants are asked to fill out an evaluation form. To the question: 'Would you recommend this training to others?' they responded with a 9.3 out of 10.

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Digital for real: business model

Over the last months (actually, more like years), we’ve studied the digital transformation of several companies in the Software Center. Professor Helena Holmström Olsson and I developed a model to illustrate how they actually transition from their legacy business rooted in atoms to a digital business based on bits (see the figure). It has four dimensions: business model, data exploitation, product upgrade and AI/ML/DL. In this post, we’re focusing on the business model dimension.

Based on our research with several of the Software Center partners, we identified that companies evolve through a similar pattern when it comes to transforming their business model. Especially in the embedded systems domain, the starting point is traditional product sales, eg a car, a truck, a radar, a pump or a base station. We often refer to this as “box sales” and the business model is highly transactional: I sell you the box and I will then try to sell you a new box in a few years’ time. There may be some revenue generated from services, such as product maintenance, but this tends to be a small fraction.

The digital transformation stages.

The next phase is where the product is offered as a service. Here, mostly the monetization of the physical product changes from a one-time transaction to a continuous revenue stream. There are several challenges with this, including this requiring the company to, in effect, finance the product for its customers, but it can be a very effective way to grow revenue as customers that wouldn’t have bought the product in the traditional model as, for example, they don’t need it full-time, may well want to buy it as a service.

As a next step, we see that companies start to develop all kinds of services around the product. These services tend to surround the operation of the product and may range from offering accessories in a rental model to providing information and advisory services to improve efficiency or the quality of outcomes. In this phase, the product is used as a platform to generate more revenue from complementing services.

In the fourth step, the monetization model changes again and becomes more customer oriented. Rather than associating monetization with the product, it becomes associated with customer KPIs that can be influenced by the product. Examples of these customer KPIs include the number of successful deliveries without delays, the reduction in end-customer churn or the reaction time gained by earlier detection. In this case, the company focuses on the factors that influence the customer’s bottom line and links the business model to improving those factors.

Finally, the company seeks to develop a second customer base where it can monetize the data generated and captured from its primary customer base. For example, trucks have accelerometers that provide information about the quality of roads (such as the presence of potholes) and government functions responsible for road maintenance may be willing to buy this information. The result is a two-sided market where the company still sells to its primary customer base but also monetizes the data from its primary customer base to its secondary customer base. Over time, of course, the secondary customer base may become the more important one, which then fundamentally changes the incentives within the company.

Concluding, as part of your digital transformation, the business model that you employ will have to change and evolve as well. As we’ve shown, this evolution follows a pattern and jumping over intermediate stages tends to lead to failure. Although our model focuses on the embedded systems domain, I believe that all industries evolve through similar or identical patterns. As you experiment with evolving your business model, the stages presented here may provide guidance on where to focus next. As always, we’re eager to learn more about your experiences, so please reach out to us to share them.

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It’s not about data; it’s about actionable insights

This week, I had an interesting discussion about data with the CEO of one of the startups I work with. The challenge is that many companies are collecting vast amounts of data, storing it and then leaving it as an unused asset. It surprises me that so many companies are maintaining such amazingly large data stores without finding good ways of using them.

The key underlying reason, in my opinion, is that collecting data is easy, but generating actionable insights out of it is hard. It requires a deep understanding of the domain, as well as insight into what provides value within the domain’s context. This calls for a mindset different from the one present at most companies, where the focus often is on doing what we’ve always done, but a little bit better or faster.

The company of the CEO I talked to operates in the media domain and has reached a point where key employees of its customers receive a daily email listing the highest-priority tasks that they should focus their energy on that day. These tasks are identified by collecting data from the relevant media properties of the customer, analyzing this data to identify deviations and anomalies and then recommending the most likely mitigation actions that will address the identified concerns. These mitigation actions are the tasks that the key employees receive in their daily to-do list. To me, this is the hallmark of being a data-driven company: it’s not about the data, but about generating actionable insights from the data that you can use to your advantage.

Of course, in this case, the insights are generated based on the customer’s own data. The next step is to get some or all of the customers to agree to anonymously share their data with the company. This allows the company to compare each customer to all the others, which allows for the next level of insights to be generated. Now, it’s not just deviations and anomalies identified within your own scope, but also those identified through comparison with others. By comparing your performance with others in the same industry, it’s much easier to gain insight into where energy should be invested to improve.

'We’re talking about continuous, quantitative and automatically generated insights'

Concluding, to be a data-driven company is not about having lots of data. It’s about generating valuable and actionable insights from that data continuously and using those to generate, preferably automatically, the actions for your team that will have the most impact. It’s not about the data; it’s about what you do with it.

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“The mechatronics curricula are very meaningful and relevant”

Testimonial Vinicius Licks about the mechatronics trainings of High Tech Institute
The Netherlands has long worked to put its stamp on mechatronics design and development. One way the country maintains its ‘Dutch approach’ is through trainings to transfer the knowledge. But how does that differ from other regions in the world? Vinicius Licks, professor of mechatronics at Brazil’s Insper College, shares what he observed attending Dutch mechatronics training.

With a rich history of technical innovation embedded in its culture, the Netherlands has long been at the cutting edge of technology and engineering. This advanced position stems, in part, from the robust relationship between industry leaders and the technical universities. However, another instrument the Dutch use to maintain a healthy high-tech ecosystem is through the utilization of courses and trainings to both transfer and preserve the knowledge. Now, as the Netherlands’ high-tech industry continues to hold its influence on global markets and supply chains, it should come as no surprise that the country’s expertise and skills within the realm are also of great international appeal.

Just ask Vinicius Licks, professor and associate dean of the mechatronics program at Insper College in São Paulo, Brazil. In 2018, Licks made his first of three long treks from South America straight to the Netherlands. He didn’t travel across the globe to enjoy a vacation; he came to get a feel for the Dutch high-tech environment, specifically through the mechatronics training cluster provided by High Tech Institute. “Training is one of the best ways to get in touch with new ideas and often to get new perspectives on old ideas,” says Licks. “It’s a great opportunity to communicate with your peers, exchange best practices and learn how to push the state-of-the-art in the field.”

Eye opening

Of course, coming from a setting in higher education, Licks was more accustomed to attending conferences, rather than technical training programs. “I work for an academic institution, so usually we’re the trainers, not the trainees,” he jokes. “But this was truly an eye-opening experience for me.” According to Licks, his first course, the “Motion control tuning” training, offered him a vastly different perspective on teaching and learning feedback control. “Most schools that I’m familiar with emphasize system identification in the sense that you must use it first to get a plant model to work with in your tuning efforts. The approach that I was exposed to during the training, however, was more experimentalist. The focus was less on the ‘modeling from first principles’ part and more on using frequency response estimates to tune the controller iteratively. While this approach to teaching feedback control was new to me, it was clear that for the control engineers in the Dutch mechatronics cluster, this was common sense.”

''The courses really helped me sharpen my skills and understanding of the Dutch cultural approach to mechatronics.''

Enthusiastic after completing his first course, Licks made the long journey across the Atlantic twice more in 2019, specifically for two more courses in the Mechatronics Academy’s training curriculum: “Advanced motion control” and “Experimental techniques in mechatronics.” “I was so impressed with the courses that I attended, they really helped me sharpen my skills and understanding of the Dutch cultural approach to mechatronics, both practical and theoretical,” highlights Licks. “The instructors were very knowledgeable and all of them professionally connected due to working or studying together in the past. That makes a big difference in terms of continuity and coherence of the content they’re delivering – all with the same vocabulary and experimental references.”

“The curricula are very meaningful and relevant. They’re completely designed for someone who wants to have a complete view of the field of mechatronics design. The sequence of courses is built in such a way that some frameworks will be dealt with continuously, but from different perspectives and with increasing complexity. This is very rewarding because you feel that someone has put in time and effort to really think about what’s included in every one of the courses,” depicts Licks. “It’s most likely, of course, that this is the work of many people and the outcome of several iterations of offering the same courses along the years, but also of caring to ‘close the loop’ with student feedback.”

Check out the Mechatronics portfolio


Automation and Control Lab at Insper College in São Paulo, Brazil. Photo credit: Insper.

How were these trainings different from others that you’ve attended elsewhere?

“These trainings, in particular, have given me a different perspective about how feedback control theory can be taught and learned, as well as the importance of creating common project frameworks before sharing these frameworks with all your teams and making sure that every new team member will be well-versed in those frameworks as soon as possible. Coming from outside the Dutch cluster, it’s very interesting to realize how much shared knowledge there is in this industry in the Netherlands. People have been indoctrinated, in a positive way, into using the same conceptual tools and vocabularies, which makes the region much more productive. It’s amazing to see all these people getting so excited to look at an experimental Nyquist plot,” laughs Licks, “I’ve never seen such a fervent devotion to the frequency response function.”

Pragmatic

Another specific difference that Licks sees in the Dutch courses, versus others, is the style and format in which the training is presented. He says, of the several previous trainings he’s attended, they almost always fall in one of two categories: extremely theoretical or purely empirical. “Instructors coming from academia tend to be more prone to the theory, while typically, the industrial side is drawn the other way. What I experienced in the Netherlands was a methodology that mixed both worlds in such a way that theory was always informed by experimentation. You see that theory actually works in practice and you have a robust understanding of why this works because of the theoretical background. It’s this approach to teaching and learning that reflects much of the pragmatism embedded in the ‘Dutch way’ of doing mechatronics design.”

Do you have any plans to return for a fourth training course?

“As a matter of fact, yes. I’m looking forward to attending the ‘Advanced feedforward and learning control’ training. But I still have to convince the organizers to include additional sessions closer to the summer when the weather in the Netherlands is way more attractive!”

This article is written by Collin Arocho, tech editor of High-Tech Systems.