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6.1 Introduction

Nowadays, in order to design innovative and multidisciplinary products such as mechatronics systems, the product development process needs to be rethought or at least adapted. Current processes are based on organizational models, business standards IT solutions and so on and have to take into consideration that electronics and software represent an ever increasing part of the final product [1], as illustrated in Fig. 6.1. In this context, traditional mechanical engineering, electrical/electronic and software methods cannot just be coordinated, and common interdisciplinary design approaches have to be proposed. These approaches will be influenced by several trends such as agile design methods [2], servitizationFootnote 1 of products [3] and increasing demand for mass-personalized products [4].

Fig. 6.1
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Function assignment over time in the development process of mechatronic systems (adapted from [1])

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This chapter is divided into two main sections. The first reviews some of the current design processes of mechatronic systems in order to point out the heterogeneity of practises and the gap remaining to integrate these discipline specific practises. The second section then presents several industrial trends which will, from our point of view, greatly influence the future of mechatronic systems design.

6.2 Current Design Processes of Mechatronic Systems

Mechatronic systems have evolved from electromechanical systems with discrete electrical and mechanical parts to integrated electronic–mechanical systems with sensors, actuators, and digital microelectronics driven by sophisticated software modules [5]. This evolution is driven by changes in market conditions, expressed as new demands such as integrating more functions into the product, reducing the weight and size of the product, increasing reliability and so on.

Despite these deep evolutions, the main development process, called here the new development product (NPD) process, is not much changed over time. Although new requirements for transversal communication between all participants from different disciplines, engineering activity and cultures are becoming increasingly important, the NPD main steps have largely remained the same. The next section will present some of these NPD process models.

6.2.1 New Models of Product Development Process and Mechatronic Systems Specificities: Focus on Multidisciplinary Integration

Models of product development process have generally emerged from the mechanical communities [6–8]. Despite this historic connection, the titles of these models and the step names illustrate the fact that the originators want to present these process models as generic, whatever the type of product developed, or the type of technology used. They generally speak of “engineering design” and not of “mechanical design”. Here, only one product development process model that is presented in Fig. 6.2 [7] has been chosen as it is an questionable standard, but a more general summary is also presented by Howard et al. [9]. Based on this model, specificities of mechatronics systems design are described in this section.

Fig. 6.2
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Steps in the planning and design process [7]

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  • Needs Clarification and Conceptual Design Phases [9]

Design of a mechatronic system requires multidisciplinary collaboration. To deal with such multidisciplinary design issues, systems engineering has been proposed as an interdisciplinary approach [10]. In the mechatronic context, systems engineering is mostly used to consolidate a requirements list, to establish function structures and to propose preliminary product architecture. For instance, SysML [11] and associated methodologies [12] are often presented as a solution to support the need establishment phase whereas model-based systems engineering (MBSE) activities [13] and Design Structure Matrix [14] are used to support system architecture elaboration.

  • Embodiment Design and Detailed Design Phases [9]

During the embodiment design and detailed design phases, one of the biggest remaining challenges is the data management. For these phases, most of scientific efforts in the mechatronics field concern product model dedicated to mechatronics (Core Product Model, MOKA, etc.) [15] to store information, unique bill of material (BOM) to federate expert contributions (Fig. 6.3), standards creation/usage to support data exchange [15, 16], consistency management between expert’s models [17] and so forth.

Fig. 6.3
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Unique bill of material for the whole mechatronics system (adapted from PTC: mastering change and configuration management for business advantage (2013). www.ptc.com. Accessed 20 November 2015)

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This focus on the product data management is mainly due to the fact that methodologies remain specific for each discipline. Some of these discipline specific methods are presented in the next section.

6.2.2 Models for Mechatronic Development Process

As seen in the previous sections, a strong feature of the design process of mechatronic system is that it requires a multidisciplinary and holistic development process. Despite this fact, few specialized models of mechatronic development process are available in the literature. For several decades, different models, such as the Waterfall or cascade model [18], the spiral model [19, 20] or the V-model [21] have been proposed to support the design systems. This type of model can indeed support the design process at a very macroscopic level, but it does not support collaboration between designers from different disciplines. In particular, the multidisciplinary integration, such as hardware–software integration, is not supported.

Some specialized design process models for mechatronics have been exposed and compared [15]. The most well known of these processes, the V-Model [22], presents a general flow for the product development process. To understand how this process is implemented by industrials, Aca et al. [23] detailed the way the tasks are dispatched between the different disciplines according to project management principles, Fig. 6.4 illustrates this situation. Teams are then able to work concurrently on each sub projects and the multidisciplinary integration is treated at the late stage of the process.

Fig. 6.4
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Mechatronic system development process based on discipline division [23]

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In these first sections, development processes main characteristics for E/E and software engineering have been presented and positioned relatively to NPD general process. The heterogeneity of these processes has been underlined to demonstrate and illustrate the remaining challenges for mechatronic system design and integration. In the next section, some of the current scientific approaches attempting to improve multidisciplinary integration are presented in order to illustrate the remaining work in this field.

6.2.3 Further Challenges for Integration of Mechatronic Systems: Current Research Approaches

In the previous section, classical mechatronic design processes were exposed and appear to be very sequential and discipline specific. But developing mechatronic systems requires intensive collaboration between engineers from different domains [24, 25] . Therefore, there is a need for concurrent engineering approaches with an integrated strategy.

The main challenges in design of mechatronic systems [26] can be summarized as

  • Exchange of design models and data;

  • Cooperative work and communication among the design engineers;

  • Multidisciplinary modelling;

  • Simultaneous consideration of design from different disciplines;

  • Early testing and verification;

  • Persistence of a sequential design process;

  • Need for tools and methods supporting multidisciplinary design;

  • Support of the design of control software.

Some design methods seems to be more adequate for the design of mechatronic systems (Systems Engineering, Agile Methods, MBSE, etc) and are adapted in recent works specifically for this purpose.

Systems engineering has been proposed as a multidisciplinary approach to enable the realization of complex systems [27] apply extensions for every design phase based on the VDI guideline 2206 in order to improve the development of systems controlled by a programmable logical controller. The Requirement–Functional–Logical–Physical (RFLP) approach is a specific V-Model derived method, particularly adapted to mechatronic systems design and formed of four phases (requirement, functional, logical, physical) which are each supported by different technical tools aiding the designers [27]. Zheng et al. [28] propose a two level process based on V-Model and hierarchical modelling, focusing on interfaces to improve multidisciplinary integration in detail design. System engineering improves cooperative work and communication among the design engineers at the early stages of the design process, multidisciplinary modelling, early testing and verification and provides a set of tools and methods supporting multidisciplinary design. Nevertheless, the detailed design is still very domain specific and needs further developments.

Agile methods came from software development and are mainly driven by “accelerate delivery” realized by focusing on small steps. Contrary to established methods as V-Model based on stage-gate with strict processes and heavy documentation, agile methods principles are based on interactions between individuals, customer collaboration and working products (or prototypes) [29]. But agile methods in mechatronics systems development is less explored than in software development. However, few examples exist, as [30, 31] that present agile methods applied on industrial cases. Stelzmann [32] discus appropriate context to the application of agile methods in system engineering context. In this context, Bricogne et al. [33] propose a framework including engineering actions management, trans-disciplines activities management, data exchange and collaboration to support agile methods applied to mechatronic systems design.

Agile Methods improve cooperative work and communication among the design engineers, multidisciplinary modelling, simultaneous consideration of design from different disciplines, and early testing and verification. Nevertheless, large-scale systems, traceability and safety and distributed environment imply the impossibility to use agile methods, but the agile principles (welcome changes, self-organizing teams, etc) may still be applicable.

MBSE has attracted numerous researchers’ attention recently. It is considered as a significant methodology for the design of mechatronic systems with increasing complexity [34]. The Object Management Group’s Unified Modelling Language and System Modelling Language (SysML) has been recently widely used to support the MBSE [35]. Some extensions have been developed for SysML to support the specific requirements of design of mechatronic systems, such as automatic simulation [36], design making process [37] etc. MBSE improves exchange of design models and data, multidisciplinary modelling, simultaneous consideration of design from different disciplines, tools and methods supporting multidisciplinary design and support of the design of control software. However, current studies on MBSE mainly focus on early design phases and seldom involve the detailed design phases. Moreover, MBSE are more adapted to complex systems but it is still missing effective and user friendly tools for such development.

Mechatronic systems design new processes are widely explored by academics and industrials but none of them overpass all challenges, especially in the detailed design phases.

6.3 Future Trends for the Design of Mechatronic Systems

In the previous sections, some current scientific approaches attempting to address organizational challenges for mechatronic system design have been presented. In the future, new challenges will have to be taken into consideration. These challenges will relate to several trends, such as the ever increasing software element in products (Fig. 6.1) and the necessary collaboration between systems.

6.3.1 Hardware/Software Design Methods Convergence: Cyber-Physical Systems Versus Mechatronic Systems

The science of Cybernetics has given birth to a type of system referred to as a cyber-physical system (CPS). These CPSs refer, according to Rajkumar et al. [38], to a next generation of systems that require close integration of information, communication and control technologies to achieve stability, performance, reliability, robustness and efficiency in the management of physical systems of many application areas [38]. Although CPSs development brings up specific issues and challenges, a large majority of integration problems encountered are similar to those identified in the design of systems involving multidisciplinary teams as required for mechatronic systems. Despite this observation, the mechatronics and CPS communities at present seem to only slightly interact and share their expertise. The explanation proposed here is that mechatronic products are historically electromechanical products introducing more and more electronics and software while CPSs are historically the “Cyber-Systems” [39], which are more and more interacting with physical reality, Fig. 6.5 shows the predominance of the software aspect of this vision.

Fig. 6.5
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Cyber systems actors’ vision on cyber-physical systems [39]

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As can be seen, mechatronics and CPSs challenges and research issues are complementary. While mechatronics is particularly focused on the hardware part of a system, CPSs remains focused on the software parts. Nevertheless, these two areas share a common goal which is to design and produce integrated systems. Figure 6.6 summarizes this convergence between CPS and mechatronic systems.

Fig. 6.6
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Co-influence of mechatronic system and CPS

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6.3.2 The Role of Mechatronics in the Internet of Things Trend

This convergence between mechatronic systems and CPSs is also subject to the pressure of the Internet of Things (IoT) trend, “The connection of physical things to the Internet makes it possible to access remote sensor data and to control the physical world from a distance” [40]. Thanks to this definition, we can understand the future role of mechatronic systems into this (r)evolution. IoT is based on smart objects, which can be considered as a mechatronic system connected to the Internet.

The need for new devices or for the integration of sensors or/and actuators in new generation of existing products will probably greatly increase the development of the mechatronics field. Whereas mechatronics’ application was sometimes considered for specific and complex systems, this pervasive deployment of smart objects [40] will greatly amplify the need for mechatronic systems. However, some authors argue that “there will need to be significant changes to the way mechatronic, and related, systems are designed and configured” [41] to be fully integrated in the IoT trend.

They underline that “increasing complexity while managing the transfer of functionality, particularly from the mechanical domain to the information technology and electronics domains, has long been an issue facing system designers” [41, 42]. This state will force “practitioners and educators to further review the ways in which mechatronic systems and components are perceived, designed and manufactured. In particular, the role of mechatronic smart objects as part of an IoT based system in which the structure is defined by context is resulting in an increased and increasing emphasis on issues such as machine ethics, user interaction, complexity and context as well as with issues of data and individual security” [41].

From a technical point of view, if every mechatronic system can be individually identified and can conform to a standard protocol, the interoperability of the systems will increase and make systems even more autonomous and intelligent. New applications can then be envisioned. Another perspective relies on new synergistic services offered by mechatronic products compared to an isolated embedded system. Both these new opportunities are detailed in the next sections.

6.3.3 The Role of Mechatronic Systems in the System of Systems Trend

The role of mechatronic systems in the system of systems (SoS) can be defined as “large-scale integrated systems that are heterogeneous and independently operable on their own, but are networked together for a common goal” [43]. Systems participating in a SoS are independently designed and can operate autonomously [44]. Following this definition, mechatronic systems and CPS can be considered as components of SoS (see Chap. 10).

Main characteristics of SoS are defined in [44]. A SoS performs functions which are not achievable by single systems (so called emergent behaviour). SoS are geographically distributed, such that all participating systems need to exchange data in a distributed and remote way. This implies the emphasis of previous sections on CPS and IoT trends and the next generation of connected mechatronic systems. Another characteristic is the evolutionary development. This means that the SoS offered services and purposes change over time and mechatronic systems must be able to enter or leave the SoS during run-time. Managerial independence is another characteristic of a SoS. The mechatronic systems are design independently and manage their own goals.

This implies new methods and tools to develop SoS that could constrain mechatronic systems design. SoS engineering deals with planning, analyzing, organizing and integrating the capabilities of a mix of existing and new systems into an SoS capability greater than the sum of the capabilities of the constituting parts [45]. New mechatronics systems should enable this SoSE, with standardized interfaces and cooperation enhancement.

6.3.4 The Role of Mechatronics in the Servitization Trend

In order to improve customer loyalty and to optimize the balance between the offer and the customer’s requirements, significant numbers of industries are shifting from a product centric approach to a bundle of products associated with and to services. This is presented as a way to achieve objectives such as risk reduction, competitiveness exposure reduction and sustainability through business model evolution. The shift towards an integrated offer of products and services is illustrated by both concepts of productization and servicization, in a paradigm of a transition from a service or a product to an “integrated bundle of products and services” called a product-service system (PSS) [46]. These evolutions are presented in Fig. 6.7.

Fig. 6.7
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Evolution of the PSS model [3]

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In this context, mechatronics systems have a great role to transform product into a platform supporting services. Even if the system is neither connected all the time (IoT) nor able to interact autonomously with other systems (SoS), the fact mechatronic systems is able to transform physical product into an intelligent system allows to envision new perspectives. Some authors recently presented some approaches to consider the service during the mechatronic system design [47].

6.3.5 The Role of Mechatronic Systems in the Factories of the Future

Regarding the challenges of the factories of the future (FoF), the mechatronic systems can be viewed as the backbone for smart integration of the new factory models which is also strongly supported by the vision of Industry 4.0 [48, 49].

Since the end of 2000, the intensive use of digital factory technology [50] allows the design of agile production lines and complex manufacturing systems fully integrating mechatronics systems based on smart sensors, actuators, drivers and controllers allowing the communication machine to machine, the remote control of manufacturing operations, the self-diagnosis faults before failure of systems and an efficient management of energy usage in the production plants. In factory and production process environments, virtualization of operations thanks to embedded mechatronic systems and large industrial internet connection via distributed networks and cloud computing enables the implementation and control of cloud manufacturing operations and services [51–53].

Increasingly, new machine tools, industrial robots, and production equipment are definitively based on mechatronic technology such as sensors, actuators drivers and controllers. Then, they become more and more autonomous to collect data and information for monitoring of operations and remote controlling of processes. Based on all these distributed manufacturing information and data, manufacturing execution systems (MES) will work in real time to enable an efficient, agile and flexible production management based on information and control alignment and interoperability with the enterprise resources planning (ERP) system [54, 55]. Benefits will be obtained in improving productivity, supply chain management, resource and material planning and product lifecycle management with the complete integration of information and communication technology (ICT) and industrial internet as support of enterprise information system [56, 57].

All these contributions based on the backbone of mechatronics integration in the factory and manufacturing plants will ensure the future generation of cyber-physical production systems and support the architecture of systems of manufacturing systems [58].

6.4 Conclusions

The chapter has dealt with new models for design processes of mechatronic systems and their future trends with novel applications. After a detailed presentation of the current models and standards of development processes for mechatronic systems engineering, the future trends for mechatronic system design are discussed. First, the new developments of mechatronics in the field of CPSs were considered. Second, the added-value of mechatronic systems for the implementation of the IoT has been detailed. Third, the role of mechatronics in the design and integration of SoS was presented as last research trend.

Last, regarding the applications, two very interested topics were considered with the integration of mechatronic systems in the servitization of products, on the one hand. On the other hand, the generalization of mechatronics as backbone of the FoF was discussed.

The future trends and models for the design processes of mechatronic systems have to be considered as unquestionable enablers for transformation of complex systems into CPSs or the global integration of the IoT. These design processes for mechatronic engineering have to support the development of the new services or the implementation of industrial internet for the FoF.