Abstract
Technological progress, upcoming cyber-physical systems, and limited resources confront small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with the challenge of complexity management in product development projects spanning over the entire product lifecycle. SMEs require a solution for documenting and analyzing the functional relationships between multiple domains such as products, software, and processes. The German research project FuPEP “Funktionsorientiertes Komplexitätsmanagement in allen Phasen der Produktentstehung” aims to address this issue by developing an assistance system that supports product developers by visualizing functional relationships. This paper presents the methodology and results of the assistance system’s requirements elicitation with two SMEs. Conducting the elicitation during a global pandemic, we discuss its application using specific techniques in light of COVID-19. We model problems and their effects regarding complexity management in product development in a system dynamics model. The most important requirements and use cases elicited are presented, and the requirements elicitation methodology and results are discussed. Additionally, we present a multilayer software architecture design of the assistance system. Our case study suggests a relationship between fear of a missing project focus among project participants and the restriction of requirements elicitation techniques to those possible via web conferencing tools.
Highlights
Product variety, technological change, and process agility are a few of the many complexity drivers in product development and work systems, having substantial effects on time, cost, quality, and flexibility of development projects [1,2]
Before describing the requirements and use cases, we present problems related to complexity management in the product development of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)
We have presented the requirements elicitation for an assistance system for complexity management in product development of SMEs during COVID-19
Summary
Technological change, and process agility are a few of the many complexity drivers in product development and work systems, having substantial effects on time, cost, quality, and flexibility of development projects [1,2]. Adopting early definitions of complexity from a systems theoretic perspective [3,4], a high number of elements and relationships within domains such as products, software, processes, and the organization of manufacturing enterprises varying dynamically over time constitute a complex system. With such systems involved in product development projects and manufacturing processes, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) fail to oversee all complex relationships, leading to missing reconciliation between decision makers and uninformed decision making. Due to engineering changes and iterations, product development misses time and cost objectives [5]. The upcoming trend of cyber-physical systems integrating intelligent software functions into physical products adds to the abovementioned challenges [8,9]
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