Technical Debt as indicator for weaknesses in engineering of automated Production Systems

The Technical Debt (TD) concept describes a situation in which a technical compromise is made intentionally despite better knowledge. The introduced survey delivers insights on TD in 48 German companies supplying automated production systems (aPS). The participating companies do have some immediate benefits from taking TD, under time pressure; but encounter a significant higher long-term additional effort to recover from TD. However, TD awareness at these companies is low in general. Therefore, the aPS manufacturers need to keep a closer eye on expenditure for TD. The developed questionnaire can be used as a self-assessment method for other companies to compare their results with the average results from this survey.      «

The Technical Debt (TD) concept describes a situation in which a technical compromise is made intentionally despite better knowledge. The introduced survey delivers insights on TD in 48 German companies supplying automated production systems (aPS). The participating companies do have some immediate benefits from taking TD, under time pressure; but encounter a significant higher long-term additional effort to recover from TD. However, TD awareness at these companies is low in general. Therefore,...     »