Model-Based System Architecture

Chapter 21Outlook: The World after Product Line Engineering

So far, each methodology has its time to come and its time to be replaced by another methodology. At the moment, we see product line engineering emerge in different organizations, and we believe that these organizations achieve return of investment from architecting a whole product line at once instead of a single product. We are convinced that research around product line engineering will provide even more efficient product line approaches than we know today.

Yet one should be aware that each approach will be obsolete at a certain point of time in the future. This will be the case with product line engineering sooner or later. What comes next? Of course we do not know, but we will draw a scenario here that should start a debate about the advantages and disadvantages of product line engineering.

Have you ever seen museum robots from manufacturers producing product lines? Have you been in a situation in which you thought you noticed that the museum robots of different brands from the same organization look similar? Have you seen expensive museum robots that are almost the same as their cheaper counterparts, just a little bigger and with more expensive materials used on easily exchangeable parts? We do not know. In case you have seen such museum robots or can imagine them, ask yourself: Will the customer feel comfortable with this or fooled?

Imagine a company that disrupts the whole market by investing all development ...