Research on Quality Model of Industrial Application Software Yangyang Zhang, Xiaojian Liu, Xun Sun Software engineering and Appraisal Center China Electronic Standardization Institute Beijing, China E-mail: zhangyy@cesi.cn, liuxj@cesi.cn, sunxun@cesi.cn Abstract—The issue of quality of industrial application soft- software has widespread into different domains like factory au- ware has been widely concerned, so there is a clear need for tomation, power and energy systems and building automation a common set of characteristic for assessing available practices. [2]. However, the task is ususally done by experts and there is no consistent way to assess these practices and to optimally select one The software industry has long been discussed with quality for a specific system. This paper proposes an assessment approach problems, because what exactly constitutes the quality of a as well as a model to enable the use case for industrial application product is vague. Throughout the years, many researchers have software, based on the SQuaRE series of International Standards. proposed their own version of software quality model. The latest revision of the international software product quality Index Terms—software quality; quality model; industrial ap- plication software; international standards; standards is the SQuaRE series of standards. However, assess- ing the quality of industrial application software still remains I. I NTRODUCTION a highly challenging issue. There are several factors casuing industrial software failures. While not everybody agrees on Industrial application software is a collection of application the definition of a quality model, there is no doubut as to programs, processes, methods and algorithms for construction the importance of assessing industrial application software contractors that can aid in collection, manipulation and man- in a systematic and repeatable way. In other words, a key agement of information in sectors such as mining, chemical, issue is the lack of an easy and consistent way to assess the food processing, oil, textile mill, gas and other manufacturing quality of industrial application software and to select the most domains on an industrial scale. Industrial application software appropriate one for a particular use case. Based on the software is available in a large variety ranging from forecasting, job quality model defined by ISO/IEC 25010:2011 [3], this paper costing, management and scheduling to highly specialized so- provides a model for industrial application software assessing lutions for aircraft design and other processes in manufacturing quality. industry. Generally speaking, industrial application software is dif- II. QUALITY MODEL ferent from general software in the following ways. First, Industrial application software is an important achievement industrial application software is developed to perform a of software format of industrial technology. It carries industrial specific task in a specific environment. It is designed for the knowledge and experience to meet the specific need of the instructed specialists other than the ordinaries. Second, interac- industrial sector, and helps to ensure the industrial Internet tion is an important characteristic in the operation of industrial convergence application and enhance the intelligent develop- application software. Typically, industrial application software ment of manufacturing. operates in, and interacts with, an external environment by The importance can be summarized into the following three collecting data through sensors and reacting to the controlled aspects. Firstly, industrial application software strengthens the object or process through actuators. The third trait of industrial capability of industrial Internet for demand-oriented appli- application software is the development practice, where many cations, and drives the establishment of industrial internet various interfaces and supporting platforms take part in. The application ecology. Secondly, industrial application software last distinction of industrial application software is timeliness, serves as a carrier of knowledge aggregation, improving the meaning that the system must react within certain deadlines efficiency of industrial technology convergence application [1]. In the context of recent trends such as Industry 4.0, smart and the resource aggregation capability of industrial Internet. sensors, Cyber-Physical Systems, or Internet of Things, the Thirdly, industrial application software can realize the flexible amount and complexity of industrial application software has integration of industrial knowledge and manufacturing system, significantly increased. The concept of industrial application and implement the resource integration, massive heteroge- Copyright © 2020 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under neous data mining and deep learning through the embedding Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). of data analysis algorithms. It can fully release the huge energy Software product quality Software quality in use industrial properties properties properties Product documentation Economic and social Influence scope of solved benefits industrial problem Functionality Cost‐benefit ratio Degree of advancement Performance efficiency Satisfaction Innovation of industrial Compatibility knowledge Freedom from risk Usability Application verification Reliability Information security Maintainability Portability Fig. 1. The overview of quality characteristics of cloud computing and big data, and strengthen the service descriptions provided by materials, application verification re- capability of industrial internet platform. ports, accreditation certificates and so on to assess conformity. A simple methodology is given as follow. Firstly, analyze On the other hand, as the product requirements of software the characteristics of software for the given industry. Secondly, products, the characteristics are divided into two groups. One a key step of the process is to select the characteristics is to evaluate the conformity of the industrial application upon which the evaluations can be done. Thirdly, having the software as the software itself, mainly through the software characteristics defined and contextualized, the next step is to test method. The other is to evaluate the software capabilities acquire feedback from the stakeholders. To do so, a survey presented by industrial application softwares in use, mainly can be conducted, where the stakeholders can provide their through relevant application reports and user certificates. Re- feedback in a quantitative form. A quantitative assessment lationship between all characteristics are showed in Figure 1. linked to the characteristics enables their statistical assessment. A. Industrial properties Fourthly, the statistical analysis of the survey, reveals the views of the stakeholders, and provides insights on what is important The quality model of industrial application software cate- and should be prioritized when selecting the approach to gorizes industrial properties into four characteristics: influence follow. For instance, from the quantitative values given to each scope of solved industrial problem, degree of advancement, in- characteristic, weights can be calculated that show the impact novation of industrial knowledge and application verification. of that specific characteristic of the product quality model. As technology has advanced, manufacturers find themselves Finally, the last step is to get the quality model of industrial not just in need of employees, but employees with a different application software. set of problems. Manufacturing companies operating machines or plants nowadays have to meet various challenges, includ- III. QUALITY CHARACTERISTICS ing small lot sizes, high variability of product types, and a changing product portfolio during the lifecycle of a machine The basis of this work is on the ISO/IEC 25010:2011 or plant. In another word, the influence scope of each solved product quality model. Industrial application software has both industrial problem is different, from unit level, system level to industrial product attributes and software product attributes at system of system level. the same time. On the one hand, as the product requirements There are several levels to describe the degree of advance- of industrial products, the requirements of solving industrial ment, such as to realize the functions of similar traditional problems and industrial knowledge embodied in the industrial industrial software; a certain function or performance improve- application software are mainly considered. The evaluation of ment compared with similar domestic products; obvious ad- such characteristics are mainly on the basis of the relevant vancement compared with similar domestic products; partially or completely replaceable foreign similar products; beyond IV. CONCLUSION foreign similar products. The model is supported by a robust set of quality charac- The innovation of industrial knowledge needs to be proven, teristics described in ISO/IEC 25010:2011 software product including software itself, relevant international certification or quality model, which has been adapted for use in industrial recognition. application software in this paper. Future research directions to The low level of application verification is by providing this work include expanding the characteristics to measurable a description of the verification method, test report or other quality attributes, a wider empirical validation of the quality materials. The high level of application verification is by characteristics, and studying the specific strengths in use and providing professional certification, such as materials or ap- benefits of the various practices for industrial application plication reports from industry associations, the government software. authority, and other authority organizations. R EFERENCES B. Software product quality properties [1] M. Wahler, R. Eidenbenz, A. Monot, M. Oriol, T. Sivanthi, Quality The quality model of software product quality proper- attribute trade-offs in industrial software systems, in: IEEE International ties categorizes software properties into nine characteristics: Conference on Software Architecture Workshops, 2017. product documentation, functionality, performance efficiency, [2] H. P. Lu, C. I. Weng, Smart manufacturing technology, market maturity analysis and technology roadmap in the computer and electronic product compatibility, usability, reliability, information security, main- manufacturing industry, Technological Forecasting & Social Change tainability and portability. This category shares the same (2018). characteristics with quality in use in the quality model of [3] ISO/IEC 25010:2011, Systems and software engineering: systems and software quality requirements and evaluation (SQuaRE) – system and ISO/IEC 25010:2010, except product documentation. software quality models, 2011. The low level of product documentation is with corre- sponding product descriptions and user documentation, and clearly statements about all features and functions, as well as specific technical indicators. And some necessary features required in the relevant laws and regulations should be stated. The high level of product documentation is that necessary information about industrial application software on function- ality, performance efficiency, and effectiveness should be given to potential demanders in the product description and user documentation. C. Software quality in use properties The quality model of software quality in use properties cat- egorizes software properties into four characteristics:economic and social benefits, cost-benefit ratio, satisfaction and freedom from risk. The essence of industrial application software is scenario requirements of business related industrial products in the entire product lifecycle, including design, production, ex- perimentation, usage, security, trading, services. It carries knowledge about industrial product and related technology in process, best practices, all of those embedded in software. The focus of industrial application software is the modeling, mod- ularization, standardization and software format of enterprise knowledge and technology, which can effectively promote the explicitness, socialization, organization and systematicness, with greatly convenience for the application and reuse of knowledge. Comparing to traditional industrial software, industrial ap- plication software is lightweight, customized, specialized, flex- ible and reusable. In the environment of industrial internet platform, it is conducive to promote the development, appli- cation and sharing of industrial application software, forming an ecological environment, promoting the dissemination and reuse of knowledge, and pushing the knowledge economy to a new era. In a nutshell, the research on quality of industrial application software is necessary and urgent.