Integrated Requirements and Systems Modeling in the Mechatronic Development Process

Manufacturing systems continuously increase in complexity due to higher customer expectations regarding their purpose and flexibility of use. In addition, the growing meaning of electronic and software components in manufacturing systems complicates the engineering since the interaction of different disciplines leads to increasing coordination efforts and problems regarding the interfaces between these disciplines. For these reasons, development processes in this context need to be adapted continuously to the present situation. To face these challenges, the suitable handling of arising requirements is one key factor for the success of engineering processes. Therefore, a modeling technique for an integrated requirements and systems modeling in the mechatronic development process is presented in this paper. After a summary of approaches for model-based development and requirements engineering in the context of mechatronic systems, the modeling technique is illustrated on a meta-model level. To demonstrate the feasibility, the proposed approach is applied to a miniaturized packaging machine, which is currently developed at the Institute for Machine Tools and Industrial Management (iwb) of Technische Universit München for benchmarking engineering methods and tools. Excerpts of this application are outlined in this paper as well as the results of a discussion with experts from the machine tools industry regarding the presented modeling approach. Finally, an outlook with respect to possible enhancements of the modeling technique is given.