IT systems integration for the development of energy-efficient products

A holistic approach to design energy-efficient products requires the optimization of energy consumption throughout the whole product life cycle. This article proposes an IT system for product development to integrate product structures, digital product models (e.g., CAD models or cost models), and methods (e.g., for simulation or optimization) that consider energy-efficiency. The entire product development proc-ess is based on the property-driven design approach and is adapted to an energy-efficient design. With the integration of energy-efficiency aspects into target costing, energy design goals as well as costs can be controlled. Furthermore, a system ontology is proposed to enable the semantic integration of product models from different engineering disciplines and to provide data for predicting energy consump-tion. The software architecture proposed exploits the methodology of workflow de-sign and workflow management systems to implement individual development processes, like collecting product requirements and integrating CAx tools.