MODEL-BASED PRODUCT LINE ENGINEERING – ENABLING PRODUCT FAMILIES WITH VARIANTS

Product Lines are a group of related products manufactured or produced within or between collaborating organizations. To effectively manage a product line, one needs to understand both the similarities and differences between the different products and optimize the development lifecycle to leverage the similarities, and concentrate development on the differences. ISO 26550:2013 Software & Systems Engineering – Reference Model for Product Line Management & Engineering provides a standard for defining these similarities and differences as well as the choices between them. Model-Based Systems and Software Engineering (MBSE) using the Systems Modeling Language (SysML) and the Unified Modeling Language (UML) provide a means of modeling systems and software. Bringing the two together allows users to model product lines in industry standard formats. Combining these with an execution engine means that product models can be created for specific products, whilst maintaining the original product line model. This provides significant ROI for ground vehicles.