Analyzing requirements on software tools according to the functional engineering phase in the technical systems engineering process

The capability to shorten the process of engineering technical systems, from the mission to build the system to the final commissioning of the system, has become a critical factor for company success. This engineering process has become a time and money consuming part of the overall life cycle of a technical system. Common approaches for tackling this problem are the improvement of functions of isolated tools and the improvement/provision of the interoperability between tools. However, there is only little information on needs and preferences of domain experts. In this paper we report on a questionnaire-based survey to elicit the needs and preferences of domain experts. We analyze the answers of 88 domain experts from different disciplines with a variety of backgrounds on the importance of tool functionalities during functional engineering and discuss improvement aspects of three major functionalities rated as most important: version management, data exchange, and consistency checking.