Requirements management has been established in the industry as a primary method to get flawlessly from the early product target definitions over the implementation up to the validation and testing phase. Despite its cross-functional nature requirements management is a key factor for successful partner integration within the development cycle. Manufacturers specify requirements for their entire product as well as the aggregation of systems/components and their suppliers provide system specifications describing how their product will meet these needs. In order to manage the complexity growths due to the increase of requirements and requirement specifications, especially with regards to mechatronics, manufacturers and suppliers introduced requirements management systems. These systems are used within an organizational context but can not really bridge the gap between manufacturers and suppliers, as only tool specific exchange formats and methods exist.

In order to address the circumstance of the unavailability of a generic requirements exchange format the “Simulation and Tools” Group of the HIS (Hersteller Initiative Software) specified the Requirement Interchange Format (RIF). This specification was then handed over to the ProSTEP iViP Association to be published as ProSTEP iViP Recommendation. This Recommendation will serve as a basis for a future international standardization of the RIF to enable its broad application.

This ProSTEP iViP Recommendation covers the use cases to be supported, the format specification as data model description and additional implementation details to be considered.