Integration of Systems Engineering Approach in Product-Lifecycle-Management by Means of a Mechatronic System

Abstract

To achieve the full potential of PLM in Systems Engineering tools especially in view of the system’s complexity in industries such as the consumer industry a clear understanding of how best to use such systems is important to product development activities. Systems Engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering that focuses on how to design and manage complex engineering systems over their life cycles. Issues such as reliability, logistics, coordination of different teams (requirements management), evaluation measurements, and other disciplines become more difficult when dealing with large or complex projects. Systems Engineering deals with work-processes, optimization methods and tools in such projects. It overlaps technical and human-centered disciplines such as control engineering, industrial engineering, organizational studies, and project management. Systems Engineering ensures that all likely aspects of a project or system are considered, and integrated into a whole. After a short introduction, this paper, which is based on the results of the accomplished descriptive study and literature survey of the Design Research Methodology according to Blessing and Chakrabarti, presents a generic integrated approach of System Driven Product Development (SDPD) and demonstrates the general requirements of a generic integrated approach during the Engineering Design of Systems. The second section presents a new approach of Systems Engineering, which is based on SDPD and will explain the different phases and sub-phases of the developed approach. By means of designing an electric skateboard the different phases of the developed generic integrated approach will be demonstrated and presented. Section three will discuss the results of the Prescriptive Study and address the most important issues. In general, this paper presents the Prescriptive Phase of the Design Research Methodology.