Marc Hamilton, Fellow High Tech Systems Center

Hello, my name is Marc Hamilton and on 1 January2018 I began as a Fellow at HTSC for one day per week. Let me tell you a bit about my background. After studying mechanical engineering for two years at the HTS in Eindhoven, I switched to computer science at TU/e, where I graduated in 1990. Following military service and enduring the economic crisis of early 1992, I started working at Exact software, developing business software. In 1997 I moved into technical automation via Bergson, which evolved over the years via (reverse) takeovers into Altran Netherlands. I have been stationed at several companies over the years, 18 of which were at ASML, where I worked on exploiting modeling to enhance the engineering processes.

World leader

Here at HTSC I will be working together with my peer fellows and the research staff involved to contribute to improving the integration of software development in the systems engineering process. During the rest of the week, I will be working as Model Driven Engineering Expert at Altran (http:://www.altran.com/nl), the world leader in Engineering and R&D services, a global company with over 45,000 employees delivering services on all aspects of engineering. The cross-sector nature of Altran in which knowledge of one sector is applied to other sectors is a major competitive strength. Software development is one of the services on which Altran Netherlands focuses.

Digitization

The current practice for delivering services is still largely based on supplying skilled people to organizations that require engineering knowledge. Given the need for agility in innovation and the ever increasing combination of competencies involved in modern engineering, we need to significantly improve the way we deliver engineering services.

From this perspective, my work is on digitizing the engineering process, which allows a significant amount to be automated. Leveraging modern means of developing domain specific languages and transformations, document-oriented engineering processes are transformed into model-driven engineering environments, automating labor-intensive tasks and integrating best practices and available commercial off-the-shelf technology. Analogous with robots in production processes, this enables the delivery of engineering services via technology.

Technology leadership

The development of high tech systems increasingly depends on software, which aggregates the contributions of the many disciplines involved. The capability to master the development of correct, reliable and dependable software as an integral part of the multi-disciplinary engineering process will significantly impact the competitiveness of our industry and the social acceptance of its innovations. In my new position as HTSC Fellow I am looking forward to helping to enhance the technology leadership of the Eindhoven region.