Toshiba Inducted into Software Product Line Hall of Fame at Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute

TOKYO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Toshiba Corporation has been inducted into the Software Product Line Hall of Fame at Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute (SEI), the prestigious honor roll that recognizes outstanding achievements in software development. Toshiba was elected for its Electric Power Generation Plant Monitoring and Control Systems, a family of products that delivers time-tested, reliable operation of thermal and nuclear power plants.

Toshiba is a leading manufacturer of thermal, nuclear and hydroelectric power equipment and systems, and of renewable energy equipment. It supports these systems with highly versatile electric power generation plant monitoring and control (EPG M&C) that combines non-variable software components with variable software dedicated to particular plant types. Induction into the Software Product Line Hall of Fame represents world-class recognition of the design concept, execution and operating efficiency of Toshiba’s EPG M&C software and architecture.

The home of the Software Product Line Hall of Fame, Carnegie Mellon SEI, is known worldwide as a pioneer in software innovation. SEI’s Software Product Line Hall of Fame recognizes excellent examples of standard software product lines that allow excellent reusability of architecture and software components and flexible application that achieves enhanced productivity. SEI inaugurated the Hall of Fame eight years ago to recognize software that achieves world-class best practices. The essential characteristic of selected software is the ability to provide long-term, pioneering solutions in an important area of achievement, and to deliver a core framework versatile enough to withstand diverse demands and system evolution over considerable time.

Most past inductees into the Software Product Line Hall of Fame have been drawn from manufacturing, including telecommunications, automotive and consumer products. Toshiba’s EPG M&C is the first product line elected as the Hall of Fame from the power generation field.

Toshiba’s Power Plant Control System

Toshiba brought computerization to its EPG M&C systems at an early stage, in the 1960s, first in thermal power systems, later in nuclear power plants. Today, the company has installed more than 150 systems in Japan and overseas. While detailed specifications, performance and features have undergone constant upgrading over the last 40 years, reflecting technological progress and advances in computer downsizing, the overall architecture and software configuration process of Toshiba’s EPG M&C remains basically unchanged.

The essential functions of EPG M&C are plant monitoring (status monitoring display, alarms and automated data log), which is done by gathering data from as many as 24,000 input points; calculation of optimized plant performance; and plant control, which covers both individual components and overall automated operation. This centralized total plant supervision and control system allows plant operators, whatever the type of plant, to monitor and manage all aspects of operation via a large display panel and the operator console in the main control room.

For nuclear power plants, the system is known as A-PODIA (Advanced Plant Operation by Displayed Information & Automation), and the version for thermal power plants is called COPOS/TOSMAP-DS.

A highly versatile differentiated approach

The key characteristics of the product line that have allowed it to achieve universal application, build up a long-standing record of operational achievement, and win high level recognition, are: (1) the division of the software into variable and non-variable modular software components that can be integrated to optimally meet the individual requirements of various power plants, and that realizes an excellent environment for easy system construction, software engineering and maintenance; and (2) the achievement of a plant operation environment where engineers are not required to have high-level software skills, but can use a dedicated tool, the plant table, to interface with and directly program all aspects of plant operation.

In addition, in order to maximize the total development efficiency of the entire system, Toshiba has developed a proprietary system to configure the total architecture by integrating the appropriate software components (modules) to customize the entire system for individual plant requirements.

Going forward, Toshiba will continue to refine its EPG M&C and apply it to next generation systems and fast reactors.

Note: Product Lines mean a series of products whose basic system can be reused over and over again to make it possible to develop new products with a consistent design philosophy and with high efficiency. Product Line-type development means the enhanced software programming efficiency by reusing the core Product Lines for new products.