Integration of House of Quality and Black Box Analysis for the Elicitation of Mechatronic System Requirements

Requirements elicitation is a crucial phase in Requirements Engineering, laying the foundation for the system design process. Gathering requirements entails employing structured methods to understand the specific requests of the stakeholders involved. Given the intricate multi-domain nature of mechatronic systems and the increasing customer expectations, establishing robust foundations during the requirements elicitation phase becomes imperative. Two widely adopted methods for requirements elicitation, namely the House of Quality (HoQ) and Black Box Analysis (BBA), are separately applied to a case study involving an automatic parking gate. The system is then designed using the RFLP (Requirements - Functional - Logical - Physical) approach for mechatronic systems design. An integrated proposal combining both methods is then presented and applied to the same case study. The aim is to address each method’s limitations and improve the requirements elicitation process to generate a comprehensive list of requirements that considers customer needs and essential system functionalities. The subsequent re-application of the RFLP process highlighted the enhancements facilitated by the integrated application of both methods.