THEME SYSTEM ARCHITECTING
“HIGH UP IN AN ORGANIZATION, YOU’RE BUSY WITH KEEPING MANAGEMENT AT EASE” Ben Pronk gained fame as a system architect at several Philips divisions. A year ago, he decided to round off his career by joining a startup in robotic surgery. In the run-up to his keynote at the Bits&Chips System Architecting Conference, we ask him about his 30 years of experience as a system architect. René Raaijmakers
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n the autumn of 2019, Anupam Nayak and Maarten Steinbuch contacted Ben Pronk. With their startup Eindhoven Medical Robotics (EMR), they were working on devices that can drill, saw and mill bone independently during medical interventions. With this technology, they promise to change the surgery game and have the ambition to be a market leader in robots for the operating theatre in 2028. Pronk, a system architect who made a name for himself in countless Philips divisions and spinoffs, saw an opportunity and decided to prove himself once more. A few weeks later, Pronk selected a chair and a desk between a team of youngsters and a few experienced guys. “I’ve passed the age of sixty and wanted to do something fun again. The medical world and the application are very interesting. What mainly appealed to me was the small scale. The organizations in which I worked consisted of thousands of people. At Philips divisions and later Signify, you have a specialist on hand for each area, or at least someone who can arrange it. Little or nothing has been arranged here. I have to go out for a thermal simulation and order my own PC. I also program it 48
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myself,” he says, adding laughingly: “If I have to.”
System thinking
In the past 30+ years, Pronk saw the system architecting profession evolve. In the 1980s, a system architect was often a domain specialist. Someone with expertise in the dominant technology, such as X-ray or MRI in medical diagnostics. Somebody like that knew everything there was to know about X-rays. But with digitalization, everything became computer controlled and more intertwined. The boundaries of disciplines blurred. Mechanics, electronics, mechatronics, optics – it all became interwoven with software. Wherever possible, electronics shifted from analog to digital and in the last decade, products also became networked and connected to the cloud. As a result, the system architect became less and less a specialist in the dominant discipline. Pronk: “Very few products are really monodisciplinary mechanical. Nearly every product these days has an app to go with it. In any case, system thinking is almost a necessity. Of course, there are still architects who work purely on basic techniques such as optics for lenses,
but they’re niche specialists. Even small companies can’t develop anything without networking and Wi-Fi.” How do you see the role and tasks of the system architect? “For me, there are two sides: the multidisciplinary aspects in R&D and the broader view. The system architect must keep an overview, connect all disciplines and distribute them across the system. The challenge is to organize it optimally. What do you do in software? What in mechatronics? You shouldn’t design everything in mechanics if you can do it in electronics. You shouldn’t do it in electronics if you can do it in software. How do you ensure coherence?” “Second, the system architect needs to look wider, not just at R&D. He needs to coordinate with marketeers and the people who deal with logistics and manufacturing. You can make a beautiful design, but it also has to fit in with your logistics flow and manufacturing.” With the growing palette of options and technologies, system architects have to oversee more and more. At the same time, R&D organizations are asking their employees to start
