Product family engineering along the life cycle – research aspects to cope with variability in advanced systems

The evolutionary development of advanced systems (AS) leads to a necessary rethinking of how they can be supported methodically and in terms of processes in product development. Advanced systems engineering (ASE) offers a novel and holistically adaptive approach to facing such challenges in a structured way. However, many of the ASE use cases relate to the development of systems as products, product networks or individual projects. The additional consideration of entire modular product families within AS offers a further decisive advantage for companies, organisations and the people in ASE. By considering modular product families along the entire life cycle in a product family engineering (PFE), the approaches of ASE can bring their impact and potential to additional system levels occurring when considering product families. The systems, which become complex through variety and collaboration, are broken down into their system elements in a structured way and prepared for a common interdisciplinary understanding, as conveyed by ASE. In this paper, the PFE is presented in excerpts using examples of various aspects and points in time of the product’s life as a complementary approach for ASE.
Subjects
MBSE
Variety
Modeling
Product Family
Advanced Systems
DDC Class
620: Engineering