Philips Digital Systems Laboratories

Philips Digital Systems Laboratories (formerly Philips Research Laboratories)

Royal Philips Electronics is one of the world's biggest electronics companies and Europe's largest, with sales of EUR 31.5 billion in 1999. It is a global leader in colour television sets, lighting, electric shavers, colour picture tubes for televisions and monitors, and one-chip TV products. Its 232,400 employees in more than 60 countries are active in the areas of lighting, consumer electronics, domestic appliances, components, semiconductors, medical systems and business electronics. Philips is quoted on the NYSE, London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, and other stock exchanges.

Philips Research Laboratories: Philips Research is a corporate organisation of Royal Philips Electronics, with six research laboratories, four of which are in Europe. Philips Research Laboratories (PRL) in the UK has a total staff of approximately 250. Established over 50 years ago, PRL has played a major part in innovations, including the areas of broadcasting, multimedia services and mobile communications.

As well as product research, PRL is also active in process innovation, with the Software Engineering and Applications (SEA) Group being responsible within Philips Research for developing and promoting processes and methods for software requirements, quality estimation and testing throughout Philips. As such, it has extensive experience of working with Philips’ worldwide software development activities in its Semiconductors, Consumer Electronics and Medical Systems divisions, many of which are distributed developments.

It has also been working with Agena in establishing the requirements and validation of a Bayesian Network-based tool for predicting the quality of software modules. This is now being trialled at a number of development sites within Philips, including some from Semiconductors. A common theme underlying much of the recent work of the SEA Group has been the development of process support for distributed multi-site development.

Philips Research has an excellent track record of successful participation in collaborative European RTD projects. PRL led the MUSE ESSI project (Method for Usability Engineering) and was a partner in the ESPRIT project “PRECEPT” (Promoting Requirements Engineering From Current Engineering Practices), which was developing the use of multi-media and Internet for enterprise wide requirements management involving diverse project stakeholders.

PRL is currently a partner in six RTD projects, including the IST projects "myTV" (Personalised Services for Digital Television) and "ParcelCall" (Intelligent Tracing Solutions in Transport and Logistics), and the ESPRIT project "FLIRT" (Flexible Information and Recreation for Mobile Users).

Philips Electronics (Research Laboratories) Core Business

Core Business: Philips Research Laboratories mission is to create value for Royal Philips Electronics through technology-based innovations that improve its global competitive position in current markets or that lead to the development of new businesses. This is complemented by research into improvements in development processes in critical areas, such as software.

Exploitation plan: Philips Research Laboratories will support the dissemination of the MODIST method and tool in Philips Semiconductors development groups, in particular providing support in its use. It will also promote it elsewhere within Philips other product divisions throughout Europe, with whom it already has close contacts in this area. This will result in sustained feedback on the practical use of the MODIST method and tool which, given Philips Research Laboratories long-term relationship with Agena, it is well placed to exploit.

Anticipated impact on core business: By participating to this project, Philips Research Laboratories will gain access to a new approach to software process management that addresses the goals of several product divisions. It will provide a strong basis for establishing a principled, quantitative, basis for process control, on which future research may be grounded.

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