Newswise — Students and researchers from Florida Atlantic University's Treasure Coast and Boca Raton campuses are helping Motorola, Inc. (NYSE:MOT) to attain an ambitious goal of reducing the time to develop a new cell phone product from 24 months to 24 hours.
The "One Pass to Production" project, now ending its fourth year, includes investigation in six critical areas: product specification; verification; performance evaluation; software development acceleration techniques; digital six sigma; and software-hardware co-design techniques. Students are divided into subgroups focusing on different stages of product development in order to find ways to reduce the length of the production cycle. Motorola looks forward to continuing its support of this program to achieve this ambitious goal.
"High-tech companies such as Motorola have long used universities to conduct essential research," said Dr. Borko Furht, co-principal investigator for the project, and professor and chairman of FAU's department of computer science and engineering. "Our goal is to enhance system design productivity by nearly 500 fold so that a new cell phone can be readied for prototyping in 24 hours after user requirements are received."
"One Pass to Production" has the potential to help Motorola achieve a leading edge over its competitors on its global cell phone production, and at the same time it enables FAU students to conduct real-world work. Ultimately, this project will enhance visibility of these students for Motorola. To date, seven students from this FAU project have been recruited to work for Motorola in Plantation, Florida.
"We are extremely pleased with our collaboration with Florida Atlantic University, and we expect results from this exciting research to help revolutionize our design process," said Jamie Borras, one of the first appointed Motorola Senior Fellows, a new position equivalent to senior/corporate vice president, Motorola Mobile Devices. "The project has identified and defined new tools and methodologies for up to five times productivity improvement, while nearly doubling quality levels."
Currently, FAU's department of computer science and engineering has extended the opportunity to work on this research project to five students on the Treasure Coast campus. Ankur Agarwal, 29, a Ph.D. student who graduated this month, and an instructor in FAU's department of computer science and engineering, is spearheading this project on the Treasure Coast campus. Agarwal is working under the guidance of Dr. Ravi Shankar, principal investigator for the project, and director for the center for systems integration, College of Engineering and Computer Science.
"There are numerous undergraduate computer science students at FAU involved in cutting-edge research such as the 'One Pass to Production' project," said Agarwal. "In this process, these students are paid through research grants made to FAU, they gain valuable practical experience, and they interact with top-level management of the company which helps to enhance critical skills needed for landing a good job."
Five students from the Treasure Coast campus, five students from the Boca Raton campus, and eight faculty members from the computer science and engineering, and electrical engineering departments are currently involved on the Motorola project.
Florida Atlantic University opened its doors in 1964 as the fifth public university in Florida. Today, the university serves more than 26,000 undergraduate and graduate students on seven campuses strategically located along 150 miles of Florida's southeastern coastline. Building on its rich tradition as a teaching and research university, with a world-class faculty, FAU hosts nine colleges - the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts & Letters, the Charles E. Schmidt College of Science, the Charles E. Schmidt College of Biomedical Science, the Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing, the Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College, and the Colleges of Business, Education, Engineering & Computer Science, and Architecture, Urban & Public Affairs.
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