Adopting agile practices in Engineering Design under consideration of the product structure - A simulation-based approach

In today’s fast-paced economy, manufacturing companies seek to apply agile approaches to tackle challenges posed by volatile markets and new technologies. However, this requires resources and introduces risks to development processes. The present work addresses the adoption of agile practices in companies building upon approaches in organizational change management, complexity management, and dynamic simulation modeling. It proposes a novel framework that enables practitioners to test agile practices in the context of their product and processes in a low-cost, low-risk environment. The approach was evaluated in three case studies and demonstrated in a proof-of-concept software tool.