Managing Product Development throughFeature Modeling

Personalized solutions are key to achieving customer satisfaction. The automotive segment is on the cusp of feature growth brought about by new advances in technology at an unprecedented level. The Automotive industry uses process frameworks such as ASPICE to manage product lifecycle phases involving requirements, change request management, software development, systems testing and quality assurance. ASPICE, however, does not provide a framework that enables management of complexity arising from product variation in the Systems, Hardware, Mechanical and Software Competencies, in order to meet customer expectations. Customer expectations involve functional features and non-functional features. Adding to this complexity is the scope of Variant Management whereby a feature is enabled or disabled for a specific market based on the region and vehicle architecture. Feature requirement within a competency group can involve multiple domains for realization. The authors will showcase the use of feature modeling and how it can help resolve the problem statement with practical solutions.