![]() Kjell highlights the wide applicability of the ISO standards for product data representation and exchange (that’s the previously mentioned ISO 10303, which is commonly known as “STEP”), as well as Open BIM (Building Information Modelling) standards. Where some of the companies and experts who contribute to ISO’s work see standards as an “extra”, for Jotne IT they’re foundational. Some time later, we were able to turn that into a viable company: Jotne IT.” “At the same time, around 1991, we started PRODEX, an EU-funded scientific project that offers institutions and industry the chance to work on European Space Agency experiments. That’s a major achievement.”įor many, working on the research that led to these standards would have been enough, but not for the future VP. “Today, more than 80 % of all CAD and product life-cycle management data exchanges use ISO standards. While the first of these was published back in 1994, Kjell points out that they’re more relevant than ever. One of the cornerstones of its work is the ISO 10303 group of standards. Founded at the beginning of the space race, with the goal of accelerating US technology, DARPA has undertaken programs that, ultimately, have been responsible for the first weather satellites, portable GPS, and the origins of the Internet itself.Īmong these innovations were the data projects that progressed to form part of the work of ISO’s technical committee on automation systems and integration (more specifically, the group dedicated to industrial data, ISO/TC 184/SC 4). Well, more than you might think: the shared ancestor is DARPA, the agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies. What do the right to privacy and Google Street View have in common? ![]() His expertise in these areas drew him into the R&D activities of the US department of defence and, in a roundabout way, to contributing to some of ISO’s most widely used industrial standards. Kjell starts out with a surprise: “It actually begins with standards!” Homing in on the role of computing and the related tech that piqued his interest early on, Kjell points out that “a big part of my career has been about engineering data exchange – sharing and archiving processes”. So how did the company end up contributing to both space exploration and standardization? And how did one of the top managers of a Norwegian IT company become both a user and a developer of standards? Whilst they may have a large constellation of businesses, they’re mostly in down-to-earth sectors. Their main activities are spread across rail, IT, steel fabrications such as stairways and gratings, and real estate development and management. Jotne is a highly diversified, and innovative, company headquartered in Norway. A few years later, I began working for a company called Jotne.” He may have changed country and company a few times since then, but he’s stayed at the cutting edge: “I continued working with these systems, at General Electric, which is what brought me to Norway. He threw himself into this new area and computer-aided modelling and design became central to his work, propelling him towards a life at the cutting edge of tech. These systems were in their infancy at the time and Kjell was chosen to help them through their teething troubles. It was the early eighties and Volvo made a bold move to pilot computer-aided design, or CAD. ![]() ![]() He was deep into the problems of vehicle dynamics when the road took an unexpected turn. He proved himself in chassis development, a department that, in his words, “was the best place for an engineer to find themselves”. Sure enough, Kjell began his career at Volvo. “Already at that time, I started to play around with programmable calculators, created my first Basic programs on teletype telex machines and, of course, had one of those Sinclair computers,” Kjell recalls. As a young man, there was little doubt in his mind that technology was his future. His childhood was spent in the Swedish manufacturing and port city of Gothenburg, home to Volvo cars. Preparatory testing for Ireland’s first space mission, EIRSAT-1, is underway at ESA’s Hertz antenna test chamber in Noordwijk, Holland.įrom his earliest days, Kjell was surrounded by engineering. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |