Publication

This year, 2022, we’re celebrating the 20th anniversary of ESI. To mark this moment, we’ve compiled this booklet. It contains an overview of our history, ongoing  research activities and results, and a glimpse into the future of ESI. 

At the start in 2002, “embedded systems” was selected by the Ministry of Economic Affairs with the support of industry and academia as one of the key areas for Dutch competitiveness. Twenty years later, we can say with some conviction that systems engineering has become a strategic spearhead worldwide. ESI’s research program for the coming years is full of demanding, topical challenges such as the need for guaranteed performance and reliability of high-tech equipment (“towards zero unscheduled downtime”), the wide diversity (customer and application-specific) with which high-tech equipment is produced, used and maintained, the integration of high-tech equipment in larger systems, the application of artificial intelligence in high-tech equipment (opportunities and challenges), the (market) need to continuously and frequently update safety/mission-critical systems, the  shortage of R&D experts who can oversee the complexity of the systems, the effective introduction of model-based methodologies in the industry, and the list goes on.

The knowledge ESI has been able to develop over the years together with partner companies from the high-tech industry, university partners, international partners and TNO is widely disseminated. Methodologies are freely available and shared through the ESI academy, industrial and academic partners, the  international network and with the help of implementation partners.

Our “industry-as-a-lab” approach is unique: research is conducted on-site at our industrial partners. This booklet contains a selection of stories illustrating the results of this approach. Each of these stories was previously published in Bits&Chips. Our thanks go to Nieke Roos, who was able to compile all the stories based on interviews into a coherent whole. And to the designer Camiel Lintsen, who was able to transform our usually invisible work into appealing images. 

2022 is also the year in which we bid farewell to Frans Beenker, board member from the very beginning. His contribution to ESI has been invaluable. His role will be taken over by Jacco Wesselius, who together with Wouter Leibbrandt will work on strengthening the position of ESI in the coming years. We hope to meet you again in the near future to continue discussing the challenges and opportunities of the high-tech industry or similar challenges and opportunities in other areas.