The Necessity of Low-code Engineering for Industrial Software Development: A Case Study and Reflections

Developing industrial software systems is challenging due to the complexity of industrial operations, as well as the distinct knowledge structures and cultures between industrial domains and professional software development. Industrial domain experts are often with very limited programming backgrounds, while most professional developers lack the understandings of industrial operations. In this paper, we reported a case study conducted in a large metal processing plant. The results revealed that: (1) the collaboration between industrial domain experts and professional software engineers is inefficient and ineffective; (2) industrial domain experts would rather build industrial applications by themselves; however, existing techniques are primarily developed for professional developers rather than them; (3) industrial domain experts expect to be assisted by visual language-based low-code platforms in building such applications. We reflected on the findings and thus argued the necessity and potentials of low-code engineering for industrial software development.