AM-PACK Variants & Reusability

Variant management is the backbone of development and production of an efficient product line.
AM-PACK variant management has the perspective of the supplying industry: It does not focus on the diversity of variants of a product, but on the ability to manage varied product lines and supply each customer with a product variant which exactly meets his requirements.
AM-PACK distinguishes the differences within a product line
- per variant and
- per change request version of the variant, i.e. per execution of the agile V
and that
- as well at artifact level like requirement, solution, test case etc.
- as at document level like requirements specification, architectural design specification etc.
The user can freely decide for each component of a product line, if he wants to maintain autonomous documents per variant or - a particular strength of AM-PACK: - all variants in one document. The second method reduces the number of documents to be managed significantly.
Utilisation of carry-over parts and reusability of software are important cost reduction drivers. They are based on the principle that the same requirements must be met.
The enormous benefits are
- the reduction of testing efforts and
- the reduction of the number of components to develop, maintain and produce.
AM-PACK is able to treat each component of a system or a product line according to each of the following options:
- new own component
- new bought-in component
- internal carry-over part, i.e. it is treated as a new own component within a product line but nevertheless can simultaneously serve as carry-over part elsewhere
- platform carry-over part, i.e. it is is treated as a new component within an autonomous product familiy/platform and hence can serve as carry-over part elsewhere
- autonomous carry-over part, i.e. it is is treated as a new autonomous system and as such can serve as carry-over part elsewhere
- utilisation of a carry-over part, which is specified elsewhere
- utilisation of a known bought-in component