Traceability in Systems Engineering - Review of industrial practices, state-of-the-art technologies and new research solutions

This article discusses issues and solutions regarding traceability for Systems Engineering projects. A review of industrial Systems Engineering practice is presented based on observations and studies that have been carried out at different original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). The studies reveal challenges in communication, data-transparency and data-consistency resulting among others from diverse and inhomogeneous toolsets. Existing traceability solutions, which are one possibility to address these challenges, struggle to achieve satisfactory cost/benefit ratios. Thus, further improvements of existing approaches with new concepts and ideas are required. The article presents a morphological schema for traceability approaches. Its aim is to support attribute recombination to new research solutions and to overcome existing problems with naming conventions. The application of the schema is shown at the example of two novel approaches from Fraunhofer IPK and Daimler AG which are focusing on issues in trace link recording within Systems Engineering projects. The implementation, evaluation and functional comparison for both approaches are presented based on an exemplary automotive system. First results show a significant reduction of required trace recording efforts and good acceptance from engineers in the automotive industry. The developed schema and the two approaches contribute to the establishment of traceability for process improvement in future Systems Engineering projects.