ATB Institute for Applied Systems Technology Bremen GmbH, located in Bremen (Germany), was founded in 1991 and has the status of a non-profit organisation. The shareholders of ATB are the State of Bremen, the University of Bremen and a group of important industrial companies. Among others, ATB shareholders are DaimlerChrysler, STN ATLAS Elektronik and also a number of SMEs which are located in the region of Bremen. ATB has established a research team of 18 scientists which is supported by about 20 employees working on a temporarily or part-time basis. ATB operates on the basis of a quality management system which is fully compliant to ISO 9000. The main strategic business areas of ATB are Software Systems Technology, Systems Analysis & Design and Quality Management. One basic objective of ATB is to apply system technology methods and tools in order to improve the quality and efficiency of processes in various application areas. Special emphasis is given to the improvement of software engineering processes. The general concept of ATB is to establish in close co-operation with its industrial partners a well balanced application-oriented research, which should result both in solving the specific problems of the partners, and in contributing to the further development of system technology sciences.
Within the business area of Systems Analysis & Design, ATB has developed the BEP methodology for business process re-engineering. In the scope of several CEC-funded projects (DonQ-CIM, IMPLACE, QSHOP, DonQ-SPI, BEP-IIM, BEP-IFM, SMART-SME, IWOP), BEP has been applied successfully to about 50 SMEs in different European regions in order to improve manufacturing and software producing processes. Furthermore, ATB has developed the BQM methodology for the efficient implementation of QM systems within SMEs. BQM has successfully been applied to about 100 SMEs in region of North Germany and world-wide (Asia and Latin America). In the scope of the CEC ESPITI campaign, ATB as a subcontractor of the Regional Organiser in Germany (FZK), was responsible for the dissemination of Software Best Practice material in the region of North Germany. Based on ATBīs participation in the ESPITI campaign and its BQM activities, ATB has gained best reputation as a Technology Competence and Transfer Center, having installed efficient dissemination channels. ATB was acting as a node for the northern part of Germany in the scope of the CEC ESPINODE campaign. In this project, industrial companies were supported to carry out software process improvement activities and to exploit results of projects funded by the CEC in scope of ESSI programme. Within this project ATB has established strong contacts with a high number of software systems vendors and end-users, especially SMEs. ATB is also responsible to co-ordinate the European ESPINODE network (18 regional nodes established Europe-wide). ATB is currently acting as a collaborator in the IST project WG-ECUA (European COTS User Working Group) to create awareness and recruit new members for the Working Group. The major objectives of ECUA are besides other to attract about 200 new working group members, form special interest groups and establish a network of experts.
Based on the long-term experience of its senior staff members, ATB is heading and managing large industrial, national and European research projects. ATB is taking over for a variety of projects on European and national level the task of proposal manager, and for various projects ATB is responsible for the project management or is handling the project management as subcontractor of the prime contractor. ATBīs infrastructure is well prepared for the successful, cost and time efficient execution of these types of tasks. Since several years, key staff members of ATB are involved in a variety of project reviews and project evaluation activities in the scope of the ESPRIT and IST programme.
Therefore, ATB has established intensive contacts with SW producing companies in northern part of Germany, especially SMEs, and leading European SW engineering organisations which is ensuring its high capability to disseminate the results of the individual software best practice actions.
Address:
Wiener Str. 1
28359 Bremen
Germany
Tel: +49 421 220
9265
Fax: +49 421 220 9210
www.atb-bremen.de
