COPING WITH MULTIDISCIPLINARY PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT - A PROCESS MODEL APPROACH

The aim of this contribution is to introduce a novel process model developed by the research alliance FORFLOW (Bavarian research cooperation for process- and workflow support for planning and controlling procedures in the product development). This research alliance consists of six institutes of mechanical engineering and applied informatics of four Bavarian universities. We claim that the FORFLOW-process model is rather detailed but yet variable and universal enough to support multiple aspects during product development. It enables to deal with increased challenges in multidisciplinary development and provides broad situation-specific support. This is demonstrated based on typical challenges: "integration of mechatronic aspects", "situation-specific process planning", "integration of design iterations", "integration of lessons learned", "supporting aspects of Design for X", "support of CAx-aspects", "multi-level safeguarding" and "integration of simultaneous and concurrent engineering". By means of these topics the contribution will also focus on approaches that were developed to cope with these challenges. In addition to advantages of existing and known process models, these approaches are integral parts of the FORFLOW-process model. Furthermore, resultant possibilities and advantages as the dynamic connection between process model and different product models or the enhanced search quality are depicted.