Product reengineering is a very common practice in industry to improve and optimize product properties for new and individualized customer requirements and to meet internal requirements for less design and production costs. Products are thereby reengineered by applying new technologies and redesigning a number of product parts. The functional analysis applied by product reengineering is less abstract than by New Product Development and thus problems and weak points in a product structure can be easier identified. Disadvantage thereby is that the solution space for problem solving can be tremendously constrained through the detailed problem statements. In order to avoid this effect and to enhance innovative problem solving by product reengineering we introduce a functional analysis approach for problem modelling of existing product structures. We define a number of hierarchical levels for a product function structure in order to enable problem modelling on different abstraction levels. Thereby a large number of technologies and solution principles are included in the solution space. We use a pneumatic valve for rail systems as a case study in order to demonstrate the functional analysis and the problem modelling on different abstraction levels. Furthermore we clearly define terms such as technology, constructive layout, requirements, product properties and functions as well as their relations to each other, in order to enhance the use of this approach in the industry.     «

Product reengineering is a very common practice in industry to improve and optimize product properties for new and individualized customer requirements and to meet internal requirements for less design and production costs. Products are thereby reengineered by applying new technologies and redesigning a number of product parts. The functional analysis applied by product reengineering is less abstract than by New Product Development and thus problems and weak points in a product structure can be...     »