Research focus

By training and transfer of methods, we understand the sustainable build-up as well as the consistent integration of method knowledge in product development in both the university and industrial context. Method knowledge comprises the selection and adaptation of methods and tools, taking into account the company-specific development situation. The methods are tailored to the target group of developers and the individual application context to ensure efficient and effective support. In particular, we focus on the following topics in this research area:

• Situational selection and adaptation of methods
• Education and training in product development

Due to the increasing proportion of software in products and changing business models, the industry is confronted with the need for shorter and more flexible product development processes. Digitization, i.e. the intensive and data-based networking of machines, products and people, can encounter the challenges of this global social and technological change. Under these circumstances and in this research field, the ISF WG focuses on the development of methods for strategic technology assessment and introduction, supporting the company-specific selection and potential implementation of individual digitization measures. The core idea of the research work of the ISF WG is the practical creation of added values for industry. In the development of supporting methods and tools, the WG ISF assigns central importance to the aspects of low costs, low time expenditure and individually meaningful results.

Systems Engineering (SE) is a very broad research area that is the cornerstone of Model-based Systems Engineering as well as Requirements Engineering. SE describes the most important fundamentals of systemic thinking of products, networks and organizations. With the help of the basic principles of SE, complex interrelationships of the most diverse objects of investigation, from rough future scenarios to fine system components, can be made tangible and, in particular, manageable - even in everyday life.

Model-based systems engineering (MBSE) is the formalized application of models to support activities, requirements, design, analysis, verification, and validation from the concept phase to late lifecycle phases. Instead of single documents from different domains, MBSE aims at an interdisciplinary model - following the motto "a picture is worth a thousand words". Current research topics of the ISF WG deal, among other things, with the linking of analytical with descriptive models, the incorporation of future images into models, and the support of activities such as architecture management or functional specification through modeling of the system.

Simply stating requirements is often not enough.

In order to master challenges such as the traceability of requirements and meeting the interests of stakeholders, additional activities must be taken into account. Requirement engineering deals with elicitation, analysis, documentation and validation as well as release, modification and traceability of requirements. Current research topics of the AG ISF extend the methods of RE. Among other things, future images and future scenarios are taken up and integrated into existing environment and system models in order to elicit future-robust requirements.

In times of rapidly changing product requirements and wishes, flexible adaptation of products during development is becoming increasingly important. However, this requires certain processes, structures, and ways of acting and thinking so that development organizations can quickly reorient and adapt to the new circumstances if necessary. Agile methods such as Scrum address these challenges and support development teams in the flexible design of modern products through an incremental and iterative approach. In this process, the customer is always involved in the development in order to implement the products in line with requirements. On the other hand, plan-driven (classical) processes are often used in the development of physical products, for example to define releases and fulfill documentation obligations. The WG is therefore concerned with the development of concepts for the introduction of hybrid development structures in SMEs in which agile and plan-driven approaches are combined.

Process Management

Processes describe sequences of activities to ultimately achieve a desired target state. Processes can be visualized via models to support project management. Process models are often used for scheduling and defining milestones (e.g. Gantt). In addition, processes can also be mapped in content-focused and logically linked models (e.g. BPMN). The integration of these and other views in common process models encompasses the topic area of model-based process engineering, from which potentials for the effective coordination of development information between stakeholders from different engineering areas arise. This supports the implementation of complex product development projects and forms a sub-area of Model-based Systems Engineering. The ISF WG focuses on and researches possibilities for linking different process models in order to subsequently derive holistic optimization potentials for processes.

In the field of the circular economy, the ISF WG is setting up several future-oriented research fields that concern the planning of the entire life cycle of products from the initial idea to recycling. Thereby, we develop methods how aspects from different product life cycle phases can already be considered in product design and conception during product development. We provide insights into technologies of the future and link scenario development with systematic requirements definition and documentation.

Sustainable Design & Circular Economy

Design for Sustainabilty aims to design products in such a way that they have the lowest possible environmental impact. This includes economic, ecological and social impacts. In our work, we focus in particular on the ecological factors and, in product development, we design the entire life cycle of a product, its components and its material to ensure that it is fundamentally sustainable, can be used sustainably and can be recycled. It is also important to consider the ecosystem surrounding the product - the product-service system as a whole - so that a circular economy can actually be implemented. Strategies and measures are developed by us and, for example, applied and evaluated in workshop series in companies. We therefore deal not only with modular product structures, but also with surrounding services and apps to control usage and recycling.

Design of product generations and design DNA

The shape of industrial products is the result of the design process driven by the developers. Since currently about 90% of all development projects concern further developments, the topic of the design of product generations is becoming increasingly important. The main challenges here are the systematic identification of identity-defining design characteristics - the design DNA - and their consistent transmission over time. The objective of the work in the IK is to methodically support the design of product generations through inspiration from nature with a focus on interdisciplinary work between design and technology. Taking into account the basic knowledge of design identification and inheritance in the living world, aids for the analysis and systematic continuation of design DNA are currently being developed, tested and made available.

In this thematic area, the WG explores possible future scenarios based on today's political decisions, technological developments, and societal changes, focusing primarily on the world of digital transformation and ground-based mobility. On the one hand, the core objective of our research is to improve the assessability of the relevance and potential of today's innovations and hype technologies in the context of the future. On the other hand, our work aims at an improved requirements management that can effectively react to techno-socially driven requirements of tomorrow already today. Also, the WG is deeply involved in the topic context of security/safety engineering.

Usage and application scenarios are defined to derive requirements to be considered in the development of future vehicle concepts and mobility applications. Concept development considers both partial and total packages as well as the interaction of several requirement areas, such as ergonomics, safety, design and technology. The design and evaluation of vehicle concepts is supported in the early phases of the development process through the development and use of appropriate tools like Virtual Reality.