Managing Uncertainties of Requirements in Product Platform Development

Platforms are a common approach for achieving synergies by a standardization of components. By using a platform in several products with different customer requirements, this approach causes technical compromises. The requirements management is crucial during the development of the platform, for setting up an optimal compromise between cost saving and performance losses. One major challenge is the uncertainty of requirements, being a risk for both development time and quality of the result. This challenge is of particular importance in platform development, because the considerable time period between platform development and market launch of the derivative products. To overcome it, we present in our paper the Uncertainty Mode and Effects Analysis (UMEA). By evaluating the influence of requirements changes as well as the stability of requirements, the risk of requirements changes can be determined. This supports a targeted management of requirements uncertainty.     «

Platforms are a common approach for achieving synergies by a standardization of components. By using a platform in several products with different customer requirements, this approach causes technical compromises. The requirements management is crucial during the development of the platform, for setting up an optimal compromise between cost saving and performance losses. One major challenge is the uncertainty of requirements, being a risk for both development time and quality of the result. This...     »