Assessment of Production System Alternatives During Early Development Phase

The development of modern mechatronic systems is characterized by a rising complexity and an increasing necessity to develop product and according production system in a close interplay. Model-based Systems Engineering has been introduced to cope with these challenges by means of an integrated system model. It enables the consideration of possible interdependencies and allows the analysis of the whole system model from the beginning. Especially during the early phase of the production system development many interdependencies have to be considered while the information are still vague and most system specifications yet have to be determined. The objective of the approach presented in this contribution is therefore to compare and assess early alternative production system specifications parallel to the development in order to reduce the relevant solution space and save valuable development resources. For that purpose a three stage evaluation procedure is proposed and methodologically founded. Additionally an according multi criteria structure that is based on common specification languages like CONSENS or SysML is presented and the practicality of the approach is demonstrated with an application example.