A Holistic Approach to Risk Oriented Lifecycle Engineering: Assessing Lifecycle Risks in Early Phases

Innovative companies nowadays face demanding challenges as more complex product architectures and shorter product lifecycles endanger the success of innovative products. Rising product recalls and critical software patches are the observable consequences, threatening not only revenue but reputation and customer satisfaction. Therefore, it is evident that companies need to frontload their development processes while managing complexity through effective and in-depth product lifecycle monitoring. This becomes even more crucial in the context of multi-project management, employee turnover and low in-house production depth.In this paper, an approach to systematically assess project specific technical risks and uncertainties in early phases is presented. Based on qualitative ratings of risk and control factors and a staged aggregation and transformation of the assessment data into continuously updated maturity indicators, an effective method for product lifecycle monitoring is accomplished. It is shown how this will help companies to drastically reduce lifecycle costs. The approach is flanked by embedment into a real-time online information system satisfying several critical requirements. The application is validated by an industrial use case of an innovative manufacturer with a strong focus on critical uncertainties in subsequent product lifecycle phases.