Engineering process transformation to manage (In)consistency

Inconsistencies pose a severe issue to overcome in collaborative modeling scenarios, especially in settings with difierent domains involved. This is due to the significantly different formalisms employed that have overlapping semantic domains. A pertinent example are today's mechatronic and Cyber-Physical Systems. In this paper, we propose an approach for managing inconsistencies based on explicitly modeled linguistic and ontological properties. We argue that to fully understand the reasons of their occurrence and impact on the overall design, inconsistencies should be investigated in the context of the process they emerge in. For this purpose, we propose a language for modeling processes in conjunction with the properties of the engineered system. Characteristics of inconsistencies are identifued in terms of process models and properties. A method for optimal selection of management techniques is provided. We demonstrate our ideas on a case study of a real mechatronic system.