Feature Models Supporting Trade-Off Decisions in Early Mechatronic Systems Design

DS 81: Proceedings of NordDesign 2014, Espoo, Finland 27-29th August 2014

Year: 2014
Editor: Miko Laakso, Kalevi Ekman
Author: Kuhn, Arno; Bremer, Christian; Dumitrescu, Roman; Gausemeier, Jurgen
Series: NordDESIGN
Institution: 1: Fraunhofer IPT, Germany; 2: University of Paderborn, Germany
Section: Tools, methods and approaches in product development
Page(s): 835-844
ISBN: 978-1-904670-58-2

Abstract

Many development projects cause serious challenges to their developers: a rich set of new features has to be implemented within a restricted schedule and tight budget constraints. Often, this necessitates trade-offs: Certain features are incorporated into later releases to reduce risk of schedule delay. To support release planning, transparency regarding possible feature-trade-offs is needed: What exactly is the set of all planned features, what alternatives exist and how do they depend on each other? Especially in mechatronic systems design defining possible feature-trade-offs results in a big challenge. Due to its multidisciplinary character, dependencies from mechanics, electronics and software have to be considered. Within this contribution, we introduce feature-models as an appropriate approach to bring transparency into trade-off decisions. The model is integrated into a modelling technique for early mechatronic systems specification that supports the emerging approach of Model-Based Systems Engineering. By this, we show how feature-models enrich the engineering of complex mechatronic systems.

Keywords: Trade-off decisions, feature modelling, model-based systems engineering, mechatronic systems

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