Mining technical dependencies throughout engineering process knowledge

Within the engineering of automated systems, different engineering disciplines are involved. Typically intermediate results from one discipline are handed over to another discipline. These results are refined throughout domain specific activities, and then handed over to other disciplines, incl. the originating one. This results in hidden dependencies between the involved disciplines, the planning assumptions as well as results, and the technical artefacts. This paper shows a method, proven in the engineering of automated plants in the metal industry, to gain explicit knowledge about the technical dependencies within the engineering of automated systems. Therefore the typical characteristics of the engineering process are described first, followed by a description how to capture the engineering process and a systematic approach to make these dependencies visible.