The ReqMech project intends to develop and deliver a Requirements Engineering Framework that enhances the product development process of small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) in the field of mechatronics.
European Mechatronic SME’s need to enhance their product development processes in order to maintain and strengthen their position in a competitive global market, as the customer expectations on product quality are as high in SME’s as in other companies. The high complexity of mechatronic products requires an integrated development process that is embedded in the different disciplines such as mechanics, electronics, and software. A failing or non-existing Requirements Engineering approach introduces inconsistencies in the design and causes huge costs due to extra verification and testing. It thus makes it difficult to bring machines to the customer in a predictable and reliable way. Therefore Mechatronic SME’s need a pragmatic requirements engineering methodology to develop their products “first time right”.
The framework would allow management of the requirements and allow different product development methods to be integrated into it. The expected outcome of the project is a methodology, supported by proper SME friendly tooling that enhances the product development process by:

• Allowing users to perform current analysis methods (e.g. risk analysis) in an integrated way

• Integrate requirements from directives and standards in the tooling, to ensure these requirements are up-to-date in an ever-changing regulatory environment

• Derive options and variants of mechatronic products in a more efficient and effective way

• Reuse subsystems and components in a more efficient way

• Start using system modeling language over the different disciplines to avoid misunderstandings and errors.

The application of the framework is expected to provide a significant economic benefit by decreasing the product development costs by 30 %. The requirements engineering framework will allow a product development team to develop more and better products with a shorter time-to-market while precisely addressing what clients are asking for.