The parallelization of engineering processes has increasingly become an unavoidable reality. AUCOTEC is now setting new standards in this area. With agile engineering, enabled by the Engineering Base (EB) platform, design engineers can manage simultaneous collaboration among different disciplines in engineering projects much more efficiently and effectively. What is agile engineering, how does it work, and what is required?

Until now, electrical, mechanical, and plant engineers have lost considerable time and data quality to the change trap that arises when trying to achieve the required process parallelization with toolchains that are actually suited only to waterfall processes. However, the waterfall process itself has long since disappeared. No designer can wait until the previous project stage is fully complete. Instead, work begins in one tool without the results from the neighboring discipline. The other departments do the same, requiring repeated interdisciplinary comparisons. Inevitable external corrections also arise from changes in customer requirements or conditions, with impacts across all disciplines.

This results in a lengthy and error-prone cycle of data transfers and changes. It becomes even more complicated with parallel “waterfalls,” in which a newly released version of a process stage is edited while other participants are still developing based on an earlier version.

The Dataset Ensures the Flow of Information

The waterfall model is therefore a thing of the past not only because of excessively long waiting times, but also because the water would need to flow in every direction rather than only downward, while toolchains support only a predefined sequence.

This is why AUCOTEC developed the Engineering Base (EB) cooperation platform. It brings all core disciplines involved in machine and plant design together in a single system. Its central data model ensures that every change made in any discipline is immediately visible to everyone and can be edited directly. To continue the water analogy, the model is like a lake in which ripples spread outward with every new drop of water. Likewise, every entry in EB's single source of truth immediately reaches all disciplines—an essential prerequisite for mastering complex scenarios.

Parallel Becomes Agile

With a series of innovations, AUCOTEC optimized EB to such an extent that the next step—agile engineering—became possible. In addition to established data tracking with a complete change history, where users can individually configure which changes they want to see, EB provides attribute-level rights assignment, allowing organizations to define who can view and edit each status. This works only because EB focuses on data rather than documents. Restrictive rights applied to objects are ineffective here because each object exists only once, while different disciplines work on it, even simultaneously. A process engineer edits a pump just as an electrical specialist does, but each focuses on different aspects. EB is all about simultaneity.

In addition, the data and the entire plant structure are protected against unintended changes. This applies both below objects and above them (“glue to parent”). Agile work is possible only with this interdisciplinary certainty, which does not require data to be “frozen,” but instead enables continuous visibility into progress in neighboring disciplines and the immediate use of new data for one's own tasks. This much closer interconnection among disciplines eliminates waiting times and constant handoffs between departments, resulting in major efficiency gains. During the design phase, a plant engineering project can also be modified at any time: what was planned one or two years earlier does not necessarily need to be implemented. New knowledge can be incorporated continuously and quickly—that is, in an agile manner—into the ongoing process. The result is a finished plant that reflects the latest state of the art, rather than one that is already two years old.

A Benchmark for Future Viability

“Agile engineering is a long-term strategy,” explained Reinhard Knapp, Director of Global Strategies at AUCOTEC. “Of course, it is not mandatory; EB enables efficient collaboration even without agility. However, a system's suitability for agile engineering is now the benchmark for its future viability.” According to Knapp, anyone who must further parallelize work under increasing time and efficiency pressure, cope with growing complexity caused by Industry 4.0 requirements such as the explosive variety of sensors, or grow and invest in a future that cannot yet be predicted precisely will soon reach the limits of toolchains and synchronization platforms. EB is currently the only system that provides the foundation for agile engineering. “It already contains the future,” emphasized AUCOTEC's chief strategist.