FORFLOW

BAVARIAN RESEARCH ASSOCIATION FOR PROCESS- AND WORKFLOW SUPPORT FOR PLANNING AND CONTROLLING PROCEDURES IN THE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

1.1 - Representation of multidisciplinary products by means of a functional mock-up

Field of work:

The development of multidisciplinary products presents an extensive challenge to many companies. Partially, these difficulties are due to the organizational integration of the collaborating disciplines, but they are also generated by the different approaches to problem solving. Firstly, in consideration of the usage of typical methods in problem solving, an itemisation of individual process steps is carried out on basis of well-known domain-specific development methods and an universally alid holistic approach to the development of mechatronical products. In addition to the identification of characteristic parameters used for specification of the progress of a process and for the description of the product itself, the aim is to find an integrative way of description, which is acceptable for all domains. For this purpose, the composition of data in terms of a product model has to be extended to a functional mock-up that enables an estimation of the progress of a process. Due to the fact that product development processes are evolving themselves during progress, fixed models for these processes are inapplicable. In fact, ad hoc and hybrid approaches for modelling processes are necessary. With the aid of software from Covum AG, real processes are captured in order to categorise process steps and to evaluate the influence of product data on the progress of a process. Then, the next process steps can be fixed depending on the knowledge about the product, the purpose achievement and available resources. Due to the fact that the development process can be conceived as a process of optimisation it is necessary to deduce methods for iteration loops that provide a qualitative and in concrete utilisation also a quantitative estimation of accuracy criteria.