Towards Agile Engineering of Mechatronic Systems in Machinery and Plant Construction

Agile procedures (e.g. Scrum) are commonly used in rapidly changing environments of software engineering. Experts appreciate improvements in interdisciplinary collaboration, lead times and development costs by applying agile techniques as artifacts, meetings, roles and visualisation methods. Up to now, the use of agile procedures is still limited to IT-projects, due to a lack of profound knowledge in transferring agile techniques into interdisciplinary projects. This contribution presents the research work on Agile Engineering, a counterpart of Lean Product Development, by the systematic integration of agile techniques into the development process of mechatronic production systems. Thereto, an introduction and state of the art is given concerning the industry sector of machinery and plant construction as well as agile methodologies. The main focus of the paper is represented by the classification and comparison of Agile Engineering as well as the main features of integrating agile techniques into the mechatronic engineering process. According to the advanced research insights of the last years, Agile Engineering is a new enabler of success for establishing an agile production, providing promising approaches for coping with change and uncertainty efficiently.