ISBN 9783843951920

978-3-8439-5192-0, Reihe Produktentwicklung

Robert Wilms
Towards Cross-domain Engineering Change Management – A Model-based Systems Engineering Approach in Automotive Engineering

255 Seiten, Dissertation Technische Universität Braunschweig (2022), Softcover, A5

Zusammenfassung / Abstract

Engineering changes are crucial elements in the product design process, since engineering changes are for instance required to react to new customer needs as well as quality issues in product design. When conducting an engineering change of a specific component or (customer) function, engineers in particular need to examine, if the engineering change might propagate and therefore lead to additional changes. Change propagation for instance occurs, if by modifying the geometry of one component, the dimensions of adjoining components also need to be changed. Besides spatial dependencies, additional technical dependencies like information or control signals in particular exist in complex products like today’s vehicles. Due to the number and variety of technical dependencies in complex products, assessing potentially occurring change propagation as well as resulting additional engineering changes is an increasing challenge in today’s cross-domain (mechanics, electric/electronics, software) product design.

Considering this increasing challenge, this thesis aims at supporting engineers in assessing engineering changes and corresponding impacts. To do so, on the one hand, insights with reference to engineering change management as well as the design of complex products are presented in this work. On the other hand and based on these insights, a modeling approach and corresponding product model is introduced, which helps engineers to better assess engineering changes in particular regarding their impacts on components, (customer) functions and different products. Since Model-based Systems Engineering is an established interdisciplinary approach to design complex systems and products, the modeling approach respectively product model is realized based on the Systems Modeling Language (SysML). To also ensure that the product model can be properly applied as well as identify potentials for improvement, the model and it’s application is evaluated by a group of potential users.