Agile Product Development for Cyber-Physical Products

Abstract

The manufacturing industry, especially in high-wage countries, faces new challenges in recent times. The environment of development projects gets more dynamic and uncertain and is characterized by fast-paced changes of technological and economical aspects as well as heterogeneous customer requirements and volatile markets. In combination with an increasing complexity of cyber-physical products, the challenges within product development are constantly growing. Furthermore, companies need to be more flexible and be able to adjust to changing conditions (Schuh & Dölle 2021, S. 11). To increase flexibility, enablers (i.e., advanced manufacturing technologies) and tools (i.e., data-based automated design tools) are presented, whose further development and integration into the product development process reduce development times. Agile product development for cyber-physical products has become a significant research focus in order to meet the challenges described and to ensure the future competitiveness of manufacturing companies. The following paper and respective sections will describe the vision and main research activities within the Cluster of Excellence “Internet of Production” (IoP) in the context of agile product development for cyber-physical products.