Release-Engineering — An Approach to Control Rising System-Complexity

This paper presents an innovative approach to augment R&D effectiveness and manage increasing system complexity. Release-Engineering is a principle of software engineering which can be transferred to complex automotive systems. Simulations based on features show significant reduction of internal complexity. Without reduction of necessary marketwise diversity, a time wise bundling of component changes exponentially lowers system complexity. The approach represents a major step towards more significant innovation programmes through suitable, dedicated R&D efforts on system variants. Another meaningful implication of Release-Engineering is its impact on innovation frequency by providing significant increases in innovation rates.