Mechatronic products have become very common nowadays. Most product innovations are a result of the powerful possibilities offered by electric/electronic and/or software components. As product complexity increases, so, too, does the complexity of mechatronic product development. All three disciplines – mechanics, electrics/electronics, and software - have to be integrated, thus resulting in very complex processes and a wide array of challenges.

The ProSTEP iViP field study “Mechatronic Process Integration (MPI)” was conducted in order to identify these challenges and areas of potential difficulty. In 10 interviews, representatives from 5 different companies active in the automotive industry were asked to answer a set of key questions designed to identify the challenges they face in the field of mechatronic product development. The interview partners were: Continental (including former Siemens VDO), Delphi, Johnson Controls, Küster, ZF Sachs.

The key questions, the majority of which originate from the BESTVOR research project, were grouped together into three areas covering mechatronic product development, project management, and quality management as well as quality assurance. The area of “mechatronic product development” covers requirements management, problem solution, and mechatronic product design. The “project management” area covers the topics project management, resource management, project progress tracking, and collaboration between the three disciplines. “Quality management and assurance” focused on quality assurance, error handling, versioning control, quality of supplier products, and stage of maturity of processes.

This document describes and discusses the results of the field study. It leads to a set of required actions that are closely related. These include supplier integration, requirements management, change management, and engineering traceability management. The latter reveals the integral character of these topics. One major finding was that within mechatronic product development, monitoring functionalities are required in order to monitor the level of product maturity throughout the entire product development process. Such functionalities could be beneficial in particular with regard to the reduction of warranty costs.