Engineering processes of the traditional automotive industry for reuse in new generations or variants have evolved over decades on the basis of mechanically orientated products. These processes are highly inefficient when you look at modern, highly networked software-driven products and need to be brought into the modern age.

In the past, development processes in the automotive industry were dominated by mechanical components. Such mechanical components are poorly networked and subject to moderate evolution dynamics. Nowadays, vehicles are mechatronic products, i.e. compositions of mechanics, electronics and software, with the latter enjoying ever greater attention from the end customer. These software features (e.g. Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) or infotainment features) create highly networked structures that are simultaneously subject to high evolution and innovation dynamics. Furthermore, the software driven mechatronic systems need to be developed for several products and markets with varying requirements. Therefore, modern development processes for software-driven mechatronic products must master variant management. At the same time, development still must be cost-efficient, so that a high degree of reuse is required.

Product Line Engineering (PLE) makes use of the similarity and sameness of product properties by organizing these products into product lines and thus increasing reuse in a joint engineering process. PLE is not necessarily something new: product groups are also formed in traditional mechanics-oriented development. New generations and variants are derived from existing products according to the “clone & own” principle. Which PLE methods must be used in modern product development?

In ISO/IEC 26550:2015 [1] a generic approach of summarizing software and systems development in a product family is described, but no specific technics or methods are provided. Anyway, those PLE methods have been discussed in the software development community since years. E.g. in [2] two different methods to manage variants are discussed: The feature model and the orthogonal variability model. Based on that discussions ISO/IEC 26580:2021 [3] describes a much more recent and detailed picture of PLE for Systems and Software Engineering and introduces the PLE Factory based on a feature model, which organizes variants in a feature driven way. [4] discusses the risk of adding complexity to the engineering processes when introducing variant management and the effort of introducing PLE. [4] estimates that the PLE introduction first pays back after 3 generations, compared to traditional “Clone & Own”.

FEV.io uses its expertise in software development and combines this with the broad and deep experience of the FEV Group in the development of complete vehicles, systems and components. This enables FEV.io to advise its customers in the analysis of the current situation, the definition of a target situation and the development of a roadmap, taking into account the customer-specific structures in the organizational and operational structure. Here, the focus is on an optimal transition from the current processes to the new processes on the one hand and on increasing the customer’s efficiency on the other. Optimization criteria are the typical topics of change management, such as low threshold and acceptance, but of course also the costs of introduction and the fastest possible achievement of the return on investment. With its broad and long-standing experience, FEV knows that lived processes must be developed in a targeted manner, i.e. domain-oriented and in line with the innovation speed of the market environment.

FEV.io not only helps its customers with the targeted adaptation of their development processes in addition to systematic product line engineering, but also develops customized tool chains for its customers with its partner PTC Inc. FEV.io is also the right contact as an engineering service provider when variants of a product need to be developed by means of PLE processes, methods and tools.

References:
[1] ISO/IEC 26550:2015: Software and systems engineering – Reference model for product line engineering and management. Edition 2, 2015
[2] Roos-Frantz, F.; Benavides, D.; Ruiz-Cortés, A.: Feature Model of Orthogonal Variability Model Transformation. A first Step. In: Actas de los Talleres de las Joradas de Ing. del Software y BBDD, Vol. 3, No 2, 2009
[3] ISO/IEC 26580:2021: Software and systems engineering – Methods and tools for the feature-based approach to software and systems product line engineering. Edition 1, 2021
[4] Schulze, C.: Agile Software-Produktlinienentwicklung im Kontext heterogener Projektlandschaften. Düren, Shaker Verlag, 2019

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