For 13 months, Bart Mensfort provided Front Office support for a high precision project to build a more reliable and faster Subsystem for one of our big customers. His work covered the aligner, Robots, hardware Simulator, Heaters and others. The project was in the end-phase, with the technology already deployed and working at some customer sites.
As an embedded software engineer Bart went outside his comfort zone because his knowledge of mechatronics is limited and there was a distance between the engineers who were involved in the project.
Bart served on a small team of analysts investigating issues identified during clean-room testing. He conducted Root Cause Analysis across mechanical, software, and electronic domains, tackling problems that ranged from quick fixes, missing code, merge issues and complex, multi-month investigations.
A key part of his methodology was leveraging Artificial Intelligence to accelerate and deepen his analysis. He used AI to explain software structures, generate flow-charts from complex software and create clear visuals for team discussions and presentations. When faced with thousands of lines of code, he employed AI to rapidly summarize logic and pinpoint potential issues, turning a daunting manual review into a targeted investigation.
Furthermore, after developing and validating a hotfix in C/C++ on the clean-room prototypes, he utilized AI to help adapt and update the corresponding unit tests. This ensured that each temporary patch was not only effective but also properly integrated into the software's testing framework, maintaining code quality and reliability.
By combining traditional engineering collaboration with proactive AI-assisted analysis and testing, Bart helped troubleshoot and refine the software for the prototype ensuring its performance met the highest standards of precision while minimizing the risk of damage to the machine.
