It Takes a Village: Why PLE Technology Solutions Require Ecosystems of PLE Technology Providers
William J. Bolander, Paul Clements, Charles W. Krueger · INCOSE International Symposium · 2016
Abstract In product lines with many products and demanding production tempos, manual product derivation is simply not feasible, which leaves us with the option of automated product derivation. That is easily enough said, but what precisely is the role of that automation? While commercially available PLE product production tools are available (usually called configurators), they cannot by themselves provide a complete engineering solution to a product line organization. Instead, an ecosystem of tooling is required. This paper explores what capabilities a PLE tool needs to have, why other tools are necessary as part of a holistic PLE technology solution, and what roles that other tooling must play.