ProMan project is part of the One-of-a-kind production work package (WP3/PG2) of IMS Globeman21 research project. ProMan is the Finnish effort in the work package. Initially, this project will be funded by TEKES.
The partners of ProMan are Ahlstrom, HUT and VTT. The Karhula based fiberline product unit of Ahlstrom Machinery is the customer of the project and provides the industrial problem that is dealt with. The research institutes (HUT and VTT) will analyse the problem and provide the basic design and implementation of the solutions in the areas of business process development and project management information systems.
The combined research effort within HUT comes from three different research groups:
The perceived customer objectives of ProMan are:
The main purpose of the ProMan system is to allow the visualization of the structure and the status of a fiberline project in a situation where the overall responsibility of the project is divided between several cooperating partners. The structure of this virtual enterprise depends on a project but typically include different units of Ahlstrom and their main (project specific) subcontractors. The ProMan system integrates the set of information systems used within the virtual enterprise using both Internet and Intranet technologies.
The SOIHTU (torch in English) research project aims to develop computer-supported modeling, assesment, and measurement methods and metrics suitable for the continuous improvement of software develepment processes, especially for embedded products. Special attention is also put into packaging and dissemination of the results.
The whole project consists of three sub-projects: ROIHU, headed by VTT Electronics; NUOTIO, headed by The University of Oulu; and HEHKU, headed by Software Engineering Group at Helsinki University of Technology. This project builds on the experiences of the national software process management and improvement program ProHAKE.
The research is lead by professor Reijo Sulonen and includes following researchers: Kari Alho, Casper Lassenius, Kai Risku, and Pekka Kilponen. HEHKU project activities have been concentrated on two main fields: software process improvement in small software companies, and development of a methodology and environment for supporting process modeling and enactment.
The process improvement cases with small software companies consist of the following activities:
The development of a software process modeling and enactment environment, called Software Workmate, has been continued within the project. The guiding principles of the selected approach are an open architecture for integrating tools and artifact repositories, and support for multiple process model formalisms through a Common Denominator Representation.
In 1996 the HEHKU project co-operated with two industrial partners: Nokia Research Centre and Compupro Oy.