Modelling a prototype's system of objectives

Abstract

Material research is a diverse and fast-growing discipline of engineering. Especially lightweight structures made of fibre reinforced polymers have great potential to reduce the overall system’s weight while maintaining the necessary stiffness and strength in the right places and orientations. However, the development processes of such material research projects are often still unstructured. Particularly the design process of prototypes demonstrating the new material’s properties as well as the gained knowledge and expertise in manufacturing parts is a complex process due to the many diverse disciplines involved. Various concepts of requirements engineering are available to master such complex projects, which, however, are not suitable for research or pre-development projects.

For this thesis a real research project conducting integrated research on new fibre reinforced polymer concepts was accompanied, studied and supported. Thus, interviews and workshops were conducted collaboratively with all involved researchers to identify the needs of such kind of projects. The focus was set on the prototype’s development process. To support this process, a systematic approach was developed based on the Karlsruhe School of Product Development’s understanding of systems of objectives.

The key result of this thesis is a systematic approach integrating the system of objectives strongly into the development process of prototypes. While the approach is designed linearly and iteratively, it is still able to handle the complex character of named research projects. Particularly supporting the evaluation of the divergence of actual and desired future target state, an integrated representation of the system of objectives and the prototype is proposed.

Pre-development projects such as material research are complex processes, in particular concerning integrated development of prototypes, since stakeholders of many disciplines need to work collaboratively. A linear approach is proposed to make this complexity manageable by human beings. This supports to establish an effective, target driven development culture in research and pre-development projects.