The German Innovation Award recognises products and solutions across different industries which set themselves apart from existing solutions through their user-centred design and added value. With this in mind, it is hardly surprising that the ASAP Group’s Process Automation Kit (PAK) was recognised at the German Innovation Award ceremony on 23 May 2023. Crucially, the PAK comes into play where comparable automation solutions reach their limits, shifting the focus in the DevOps pipeline onto the developer. This individually scalable automation solution’s modular system concept makes it possible to define and automate development steps for specific developer roles and reuse these later for other processes. The PAK guides developers through their work, reducing the burden on them and thus creating more time for creative, value-adding work and improving employee satisfaction. “Our automation solution comes into play where comparable solutions reach their limits – at the developer level,” explained Sebastian Heinemann, Head of Software at the ASAP Group. “The PAK makes it possible to map complex PMT in organisations and their projects at the developer level, automate it wherever possible and focus on the people in the DevOps pipeline. The PAK is therefore a suitable solution for any DevOps-based organisation – and organisations looking to implement DevOps – as a useful addition to their automation pipeline. The German Innovation Award is confirmation that we have generated real added value for users with the PAK.”
PAK: Proven in practice
In fact, the original solution for fully automated development has already been in use in functional and software development at an OEM for ten years. Based on these requirements and insights from productive use, ASAP fundamentally redesigned the PAK with state-of-the-art technologies from the DevOps landscape. Let’s look at an example that shows the potential time savings through use of the PAK – and therefore the potential to cut development costs. Ten years ago, before any automation had been introduced, the entire field of function and software development at an OEM took around six working days in total to achieve a new stage of integration. This meant the OEM could achieve around 50 stages of integration per year. Today, progress moves at around 1,000 stages of integration a year, with a developer only needing a maximum of 1.5 hours for each stage – as the rest is fully automated. Yet, despite this twenty-fold increase in integration stages per year, the number of developers – and therefore the development costs – have remained stable.
German Innovation Award
The German Design Council (Rat für Formgebung) presents the German Innovation Award to companies in recognition of their outstanding use of new, pioneering technologies, methods and services. Under the motto ‘Shaping Futures’, the award encourages applications from companies across all industries implementing change processes that generate value for society, the environment and the economy. The German Innovation Award honours new developments that demonstrably deliver improvements for users. The submissions were examined by an interdisciplinary jury with expertise in various fields. The German Design Council was established by the German Bundestag in 1953 and is sponsored by German industry. It is committed to helping German companies enhance their competitive position and presents awards internationally in recognition of outstanding design, brand and innovation achievements.