Collaborative Research Center IMPROVE (CRC 476)
CRC 476 IMPROVE is a long-term research project funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) from 1997 to 2006. It was carried out by several institutes and departments of RWTH Aachen University. The partners came from various domains, including chemical engineering, plastic engineering, software engineering, information systems, and communication systems.
The goal of IMPROVE consists in improving development processes in chemical and plastic engineering. To this end, realistic development processes are analyzed in collaboration with industrial partners, in particular Bayer AG, Leverkusen. The result of process analysis (and further phases such as process design and implementation) eventually is an enactable process model to be executed by a process engine. During enactment, processes are traced, and trace data are collected in an experience base. The experience is then used for further process improvement.
The contributions of IMPROVE consist not only in improved development processes. For further details, please refer to the IMPROVE website.
Transfer Center 61
The Transfer Center (TC) 61 was the successor of IMPROVE. It consisted of 6 subprojects, started in July 2006, and was completed in June 2009.
Goal of the TC 61 is the transfer of results developed in the context of the CRC 476 into industrial practice. Nevertheless, the TC 61 does not only aim at the evaluation of the achieved results in collaboration with a number of industrial partners, but also at further research concerning ontology-based integration of design data, simulation-supported planning of development processes, incremental consistency management, dynamic management of development and business processes, or service-oriented architectures and application integration.