A novel approach to measure engineering efficiency of automation projects

Engineering is a major cost factor in automation system projects. Hence, both industry and academia aim to develop new methods and concepts to increase engineering efficiency. However, the verification and comparison of those methods is difficult because the measurement of engineering efficiency is unsolved and is considered to be a possible breakthrough in the domain of engineering. This paper proposes an approach to measure engineering efficiency in a systematic, reproducible and comparable way. The proposed approach allows a systematic assessment of any new engineering method, tool or concept and hence allows a systematic comparison of alternatives. To evaluate the proposed approach, an automatic measurement tool was developed and applied on a benchmark project. First results are described and discussed.