Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 July 2019
The context of product development can be understood as transformation of needs into technical solutions under the continuous handling of uncertainties. These result particularly in early development phases from a lack of technical knowledge. In order to counter the uncertainties, companies are increasingly implementing agile approaches, which mostly originate in the area of software development. Although these are suitable for flexible handling of project management activities and lead to an increased reactivity of the development team, they do not address the early and continuous integration of technical knowledge into the process. With the aim of optimizing mechatronic systems with regard to their lightweight design potentials, in this article a method is developed that supports agile development with the goal of lightweight design. Therefore, it combines a method for functional modelling with a function-based lightweight design method. The targeted integration of technical knowledge has shown that lightweight design potentials can be optimized iteratively in agile approaches. As an initial validation, the applicability of the method was demonstrated in a development project.