An approach and an illustrative case study for a hybrid development process in mechatronic system design

In Industry 4.0, the growing incorporation of cyber-physical systems (CPS) into manufacturing facilities composed of mechatronic products brings the need of reducing development cost while maintaining the quality and in parallel the need to adapt changes in the product development. It is then essential to identify the criticalities of mechatronic system development and to introduce an optimised product development approach. As a result, our research work focuses on combining traditional and agile approaches to improve mechatronic products development. To illustrate the advantages of such hybridisation, we propose a first hybrid approach along with the case study, consisting of some elements of the scrum method into the V-model which include the freedom to propagate necessary changes in product architecture during the development of its different modules. This new approach also focuses on the required guidelines to adopt and use for enhanced mechatronic products development and criteria for evaluation of the proposed method. Finally, in order to provide flexibility in product architecture and modules design, the hybrid development process is presented with illustrative case study.