Reference System Element Identification Atlas – methods and tools to identify references system elements in product engineering

Companies target innovations, successful new products. One major challenge is to increase efficiency and decrease the risk of developing new successful products. We want to reach these goals by improving the reusability of already existing knowledge elements extracted from e.g., already existing (sub-)systems or their documentation. These elements are called reference system elements and are meant to be the starting point for product development projects. Based on a systematic literature review complemented by an expert workshop and analysis of established methods and tools in product engineering, we developed the Reference System Elements Identification Atlas to support the identification of suiting reference system elements. Within the Reference System Elements Identification Atlas, we collected 30 methods and tools to identify reference system elements and allocated them to the various knowledge spaces they search. All 30 methods and tools were grouped in five clusters – creativity methods, data analysis methods, market/competition analysis methods, similarity methods, and trend analysis methods. We observed that methods and tools are hardly related to the identification of reference system elements in literature explicitly. We believe the Reference System Elements Identification Atlas provides valuable support to collect valuable reference system elements as the starting point in product engineering.