Introduction

Abstract

There has been tremendous progress in mechatronic engineering in the last decade. With the ongoing integration of the different domains united by the keyword “Mechatronics”, systems growing both in functionality and complexity have been developed. In mechatronics, projects can subsume whole product families, thus it is no longer the single product but the product family that is designed and validated using reliability and safety methods. The project cycles have become shorter and more parallelized, induced by ever growing time-to-market pressure. Development processes have become highly structured and formalized and the applied process models such as the V-Model require simulation and modeling tools that accompany the development process from its very beginning. Otherwise, the project runs the danger of iterative redesigns and along with this, an increase of the project risk.