Interdisciplinary structural modeling of mechatronic production systems using SysML4Mechatronics

Model-Based Engineering in the machine and plant manufacturing industry poses an emerging approach to enable an integrated development and information usage over the entire life cycle. Especially for modern mechatronic production systems, traditional development methods lack sufficient possibilities to handle the system’s complexity. Furthermore, mechatronic systems usually evolve during their usage and require changes of parts of the system. Such changes have various interdisciplinary influences and can lead to undesired downtimes, if the exchanged parts are not compatible with the existing system.
The research presented in this book faces these challenges through the development of an interdisciplinary modeling approach for mechatronic production systems. Based on the standardized language SysML the approach SysML4Mechatronics was developed. Through according stereotypes, components from mechanics, electrics/electronics, and software can be integrated in an interdisciplinary model. The model purpose and thus, the included properties, constitute important prerequisites for the modeling and development process. Therefore, this book investigates how properties can be included from standardized product classification systems, e.g., from (e-commerce) sourcing catalogs. This book shows how such classified properties can be integrated as model library in SysML4Mechatronics and used as basis for analyzing the components’ compatibility.

In order to evaluate the feasibility of the approach, a proof-of-concept implementation of a SysML4Mechatronics modeling editor was developed and applied to a production system use case. The participants in two further academic case studies evaluated the perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use based on the Technology Acceptance Model.