Function Based Requirements Engineering and Design -Towards Efficient and Transparent Plant Engineering

Industrial enterprises are facing an increasing complexity of their manufactured products. This goes along with a high number of fast moving and volatile customer requirements. In order to support engineering organizations in increasing their profitability, this paper presents major success factors for efficient requirements engineering and design in plant engineering. In this paper a Function Based Requirements Engineering and Design concept is introduced, which helps plant engineering companies achieve a more efficient requirement analysis and solution concept engineering. By splitting up the requirements engineering process in three layers - Problem Layer, Abstraction Layer and Solution Layer - the concept fosters an increase in reusability of requirements and features, better traceability as well as higher transparency throughout the whole process. We were able to prove the feasibility of the concept based on a case study involving the engineering of baggage handling systems.