Sustainable Embedded Software Life-Cycle Planning

Time to market is a crucial factor in increasing market share in consumer electronics. Furthermore, fierce market competition tends to sharply lower the prices of new consumer electronics products as soon as they´re released. Researchers have studied software-intensive embedded system design methods, such as hardware/software co-design, with the goal of reducing development lead time by designing hardware and software simultaneously. However, most studies concentrate on static design methods, in which a design remains unchanged once it´s determined. To survive the market competition in consumer electronics requires a dynamic design strategy that takes various market conditions into account for software-intensive embedded systems. This article proposes a sustainable embedded software life-cycle planning (SeSLP) process based on the evolution of embedded software. The SeSLP process provides a dynamic method for both selecting product life-cycle design alternatives and generating a profit-maximizing transition plan that covers the entire product life cycle.