Interdisciplinary product lines to support the engineering in the machine manufacturing domain

Current market dynamics force today’s companies to manufacture smaller lot sizes up to individual products. As a consequence, companies need to react to such changes; it is hence inevitable to ensure a correct, reliable and flexible engineering process, which allows for managing the highly variant-rich machines. This article investigates the applicability of interdisciplinary product lines for the engineering in the machine manufacturing domain. Therein, four core aspects are addressed: first, the current practice of companies regarding the management of variants is analysed. Second, the requirements to be fulfilled by an interdisciplinary variant management approach are analysed. Third, an interdisciplinary product line approach is presented that aims at overcoming the challenges. Fourth, the benefits and limitations of the approach are discussed and research gaps that need to be addressed in future works are identified.