8 October 2018

About Us

History

The founding team of Knowledge Inside has been working on the design of complex embedded systems since 1996. Originally, the team was involved, within automotive engineering, in a collaborative project led by Aérospatiale, RENAULT, PSA, Siemens, Valeo and research laboratories which aimed at defining tools and languages for the design of complex embedded systems. This project would be extended at the European level (ITEA – EAST-EEA) essentially in an automotive context with Daimler, BMW, Bosch, Siemens,… the involved project teams from the various manufacturers and equipment manufacturers subsequently becoming AUTOSAR stakeholders.

KI was created at the end of this project, in 2005 with the goal of developing a systems modeling technology to meet the challenges identified in previous projects. Our idea was to build the technology on well funded bases:

General system theory:

  • the notion of system is hierarchical therefore recursive: a system contains (sub(systems which in turn include subsubsystems…
  • the notion of interaction is possible and not depending on the level of abstraction between a sender and receivers who may be at different levels in the system hierarchy,
  • a very simple (meta)theory based only on hierarchy and interaction.

Functional languages and type theory:

  • because functional languages fit perfectly well with recursive structures,
  • because inductive types fit both with recursivity and pattern matching a very intuitive and powerful tool for programming,
  • in order to be able to perform formal proofs to be applied in mathematics or programming.

Object oriented languages:

  • to keep the idea of extensible attribute lists for the construction of data models and to know how to share attributes between several data types (subtyping),
  • on the other hand, the notions of generalization and inheritance are discarded because they are very complex and especially difficult to handle in formal proofs.

Beyond an innovative theoretical proposal, the company’s objective is to develop a technology capable of immediately serving industrial customers and developing operational tools adapted to the needs of engineering and projects carrying out complex systems.

KI has been offering its arKItect solutions since 2006 via tooled services on customer projects: Based on a generic development platform, arKItect Designer, KI develops system modeling applications for automotive, space, public works, rail, energy…

In 2010, KI raised 1 million euros and became a software editor while retaining its expertise in system engineering. arKItect solutions are therefore aimed at architects and system engineers thanks to the following functionalities: – a global and synthetic view of projects thanks to hierarchical and collaborative modeling – a single database guaranteeing consistency at all times – multi – synchronized views so that everyone contributes effectively – diversity management thanks to options and variants.  arKItect is an intuitive, flexible and customizable tool which adapts to customers’ business processes.

In 2012, after several years of collaboration with a car manufacturer, KI has released and marketed arKItect SEA, a state-of-the-art modeling application for System engineering integrating in a single tool the operational analysis, the management of requirements, functional architecture, technical architecture, the link to validation.

In 2015, KI led a working group of the AFIS (French Association of System Engineering) on project modeling: the PjBS group (Project Breakdown Structures). See the testimony of AFIS. On the basis of the observations shared between the French industrial players, a specification of a project modeling tool is drafted then improved and eventually released by KI: arKItect WBS-builder.

With arKItect Designer, arKItect SEA, KI offers a range of state-of-the-art solutions for the design of connected software applications, systems engineering and the project plan or more generally data structuring of software, systems and projects engineering.

KI solutions are client server. The data servers are generally located with our customers, but we also offer a SAAS offer.

The General Council of Yvelines, BPIFrance, AFACE, ADEME, FUI funds, European funds have contributed since the beginning of our activity to the development of innovative activities of Knowledge Inside.