A Comparison of Inconsistency Management Approaches Using a Mechatronic Manufacturing System Design Case Study

Designing and developing complex mechatronic systems requires the consolidation of models from a variety of domains. These models are created by different stakeholders using a variety of formalisms for the purpose of addressing specific concerns, and are used for representing different views on the same system. While it is considered good practice to separate concerns as much as possible, a complete separation is impossible. The resulting model overlap opens the possibility of inconsistencies being introduced - that is, disagreements between views. Numerous approaches to identify and resolve such inconsistencies have been introduced in the software and systems engineering literature. However, in mechatronic design practice, these have gained little acceptance. The goal of this paper is two-fold: to investigate why their wide spread use is not common, and to assess which of the approaches is the most promising for multi-disciplinary systems design. To aid in the investigation, a change scenario is analyzed using the models of a mechatronic manufacturing system as a case study.