Modeling of concurrent engineering processes for integrated systems development

For the reengineering of development processes and for its continuous improvement, the development process has to be modeled and documented. A process map is the basis for the way how a system will be or has been designed. The standard methods and tools for process modeling are mostly used for business process modeling and redesign. Due to the special nature of concurrent engineering processes, a method for process modeling has to be able to support and easily map the high interconnectivity between the process of different engineering disciplines over all hierarchies. The dominant elements in a model for concurrent engineering processes are the informational relations and flows between the different processes. These build the basis for an information-based engineering process. A detailed market study was conducted, in which about 30 tools for business process modeling (e.g. ARIS, Bonapart, IDEF, Facets, etc.) were analyzed and evaluated by a variety of criteria. None of these tools met the requirements of the project partner, not only concerning the method, but also concerning supporting factors like easy and fast input of data, multi-user and database support. Therefore, in order to meet all requirements a special process modeling tool was developed which is based on the same database as the project planning tool already in use. The paper describes the reasons for an engineering process driven modeling method and its use, as well as the rationales for developing a new software tool. Also, lessons learned from this approach are described.