EXB Solutions
Trusted Engineering Delivering Mission Critical Software

The changing nature of war-fighting over the last decade and significant reduction of personnel and funding drives an increasing demand for cost-effective technologies and shorter development cycles. “One of the general philosophies in this scenario is to reuse software as much as possible,” notes Chris Schwartzbauer, President & CEO, EXB Solutions. Headquartered in Minneapolis, MN, EXB Solutions, a systems and software engineering company, focuses on building high-quality software and accelerating the software development cycle. By automating the software testing, EXB Solutions reduces engineering development and automates reuse. This in turn results in lower development costs and accelerated delivery schedules. The collateral benefit of our work is improved software quality resulting in fewer problems in the field.

Today companies in the defense space build a technologies with multiple benefits. A single technology could be availed in a military aircraft, a naval ship or an automated vehicle. Frequently the requirements are altered, either by the environment that they are in, or the use case or their testing needs. The core software is frequently similar. EXB Solutions’ innovative tools minimize the impact reverification and revalidation caused by requirement changes and re-purposing of the software.

“We are not responsible for the end product but we are focused on making the end product higher quality and enabling delivery w i t h i n budget,” asserts Schwartzbauer. For instance, EXB worked on a technology that was being re-purposed for using in multiple vehicles and aircrafts. The process had several requirements that changed frequently. EXB delivered a tool that could be used to graphically model testing requirements, generate cases and execute testing. “We were able to automatically generate the new test cases and procedures, thereby reducing the amount of engineering time and resources required to complete the development,” he explains. The company reduced the client’s estimated schedule by more than two months and delivered the solution ahead of time. Being a service company, EXB’s solutions are personnel-related. The company developed in the aerospace industry and is composed primarily of systems and software engineers.

EXB’s evolution provides them with valuable incite into the benefits of reuse, IV&V and automation on quality and schedule. Boeing, for example, avoids making two versions of the technology that does not go into an aircraft. “Often times, we use the technology for both military aircrafts and commercial aircraft. Since we under¬stand the commercial aviation space, it is natural for us to look at a new application and determine what the implications are, so that our clients can engineer it in such a way that it’s applicable for multiple purposes,” expounds Schwartzbauer.

We call our automated approach TestCompass®, because it helps lead our customers down a more efficient path for testing

Working closely with a number of partners on verification of critical flight sensors and systems, EXB has several success stories under its belt. In an interesting example, a large defense and aerospace contractor was re-purposing ring laser gyro and wanted to get it certified from both military and commercial aerospace. The client had limited time and budget, along with an existing test environment. EXB introduced an automated solution to model requirements and auto-generate test cases and procedures with our TestCompass tool set. We developed the tool set to fit into the client applications and automate the verification and testing process. Every time there was a requirement change, we could auto-generate the entire test suite on the target device with no manual intervention and deliver the verified software in a fraction of the time previously required,” extols Schwartzbauer.

Schwartzbauer further elucidates that the company targets to expand vertically to various sectors in the coming years. “We have grown significantly over the years and have expanded geographically. We would continue to do that while developing cost-effective, best-of-breed solutions to our customers,” he concludes.