Product Model for Requirements and Design Concept Management: Representing Design Alternatives and Rationale

Throughout the development of complex products, thousands of requirements are established, communicated, followed up, and verified. In addition, even more design solutions, at various levels of abstractions, are created, refined, evaluated, industrialised and verified during this period. Although design tools support the documentation and administration of the output of these activities, i.e. requirements and solutions, they lack the functionality to support the iterative gestation of requirements and design solutions as they are created. This paper illustrates how a product model, focusing on requirements and design concept management, can address these issues by incorporating design rationale, i.e. the reasoning and the justification underlying requirements and solutions considered, with the aim to close the gap between product models and design rationale models. The product model has been implemented in a commercial PDM software and its use is illustrated with the information from the design of a passenger car cockpit.