Developing products intelligently The product development of intelligent technical systems is a challenge due to increasing complexity, interdisciplinarity and shorter development times. With Systems Engineering (SE), companies can meet these challenges profitably. Company-wide integration and dissemination is not yet taking place. This is due, among other things, to the mostly technically motivated solutions. There is a lack of individual and organizational acceptance. Medium-sized companies from the OWL region have recognized the potential for systems engineering and are moving towards company-wide anchoring. These companies have several years of experience behind them and have steadily approached the topic. These include CLAAS, Miele as well as Harting AT. They are pioneers and serve as role models throughout OWL. Within it's OWL, companies throughout OWL are working on technological solutions to achieve the transformation to Intelligent Technical Systems. The associated transformation in engineering is not sufficiently addressed. There is a lack of transfer oriented toward small and medium-sized businesses. The overall objective of the project is to develop a set of tools for the company-wide introduction and consolidation of systems engineering in SMEs. This goal addresses four fields of action: Stakeholder-appropriate method and tool adaptations, ITS-appropriate engineering structures, individual and organizational acceptance, and OWL-appropriate transfer. To achieve the overall goal, the user companies work in close cooperation with Fraunhofer IEM, UNITY and TwoPillars. They are working on scalable methods and tools, needs-based organizational and IT infrastructure design, stakeholder motivation and communication, and integration and dissemination within the company. All results are constantly piloted in a company-neutral manner as well as in the user companies. A transfer into the medium-sized business takes place via a company

Systems engineering as a challenge for small and medium-sized enterprises If you want to successfully bring complex technical systems to market in the future, you need an overview of the many interrelationships in your development project. The Systems Engineering (SE) approach offers a whole bundle of methods and tools to meet this challenge. "To make development successful, companies need to introduce systems engineering throughout their organization. Isolated solutions do have a pioneering character and are important, especially at the beginning. However, SE is an approach that only really takes flight when all departments work together," says Kai Korthals, Head of Digital Product Engineering at CLAAS. The Harsewinkel-based company has been working on the agricultural technology of the future with Systems Engineering since 2015 and is already in the process of introducing it throughout the company. Together with Miele and HARTING Applied Technologies, CLAAS is now bringing its industry perspective to the SE4OWL research project. Small and medium-sized companies do not have it so easy. Going beyond pilot projects and implementing systems engineering throughout the entire company in the long term - that means organizational and cultural change. Where a lot of pioneering and convincing work is done even in large companies, medium-sized businesses often have an even harder time. "In day-to-day business, it is not so easy to provide sufficient capacity to consider SE comprehensively for the entire company and then introduce it strategically," says Dr. Volker Franke, Managing Director of HARTING Applied Technologies, describing the challenge facing medium-sized companies.

New funding for the holistic anchoring of systems engineering in small and medium-sized enterprises" In the future, small and medium-sized enterprises should also anchor SE in their own organization in a long-term and holistic manner. For the new funding of the topic area Systems Engineering, the project SE4OWL therefore structures previous results and experiences and prepares them scientifically. Industrial companies - supported by the methodological expertise of Fraunhofer IEM and Unity AG as well as by the SE tool provider Two Pillars - are developing a set of tools with guidelines for the holistic design of systems engineering in the organization. In doing so, they are looking at the following areas. - Appropriate use of methods and tools: Development methods and tools should always be aligned with the needs and working environments of their users. - Organization and IT for interdisciplinary collaboration: Companies should rethink and restructure both their organization and the IT systems they require - with a view to individually evolved structures and current challenges. - Culture and qualification for broad acceptance of SE: Systems engineering requires changes in organization, work processes and content, and in the workforce, which should be involved in the process from the start. - SE demonstrator: The project results are clarified and verified using a fictitious company - here, the industry partners take on the important practical check.

Practical support and collaboration for companies in the field of systems engineering Companies will benefit from SE4OWL in the future in the form of guides and methods, receive practical implementation tips through the SE demonstrator, and exchange experiences in the Systems Engineering expert group. Concrete cooperation with the research institutions of the technology network it's OWL over several months is also possible, in which there is room for individual questions. In the future, interested parties will also find results from the project on SElive.