In this paper, a combination of graph-based design and simulation-based engineering (SBE) into a new concept called Executable Integrative Product-Production Model (EIPPM) is elaborated. Today, the first collaborative process in engineering for all mechatronic disciplines is the virtual commissioning phase. The authors see a hitherto untapped potential for the earlier, integrated and iterative use of SBE for the development of production systems (PS). Seamless generation of and exchange between Model-, Software- and Hardware-in-the-Loop simulations is necessary. Feedback from simulation results will go into the design decisions after each iteration. The presented approach combines knowledge of the domain “PSs” together with the knowledge of the corresponding “product” using a so called Graph-based Design Language (GBDL). Its central data model, which represents the entire life cycle of product and PS, results of an automatic translation step in a compiler. Since the execution of the GBDL can be repeated as often as desired with modified boundary conditions (e.g., through feedback), a design of experiment is made possible, whereby unconventional solutions are also considered. The novel concept aims at the following advantages: Consistent linking of all mechatronic disciplines through a data model (graph) from the project start, automatic design cycles exploring multiple variants for optimized product-PS combinations, automatic generation of simulation models starting with the planning phase and feedback from simulation-based optimization back into the data model.

Most modern digital approaches to engineering are based on models and their model transformations. Most of these model transformations are mathematically speaking non-bijective mappings — so-called projections — where some information of the original model is lost during the mapping. From a theoretical point of view it is therefore of great interest to exactly examine the properties of these model transformations. In this paper at first the characteristics of a model are briefly explained. Then some of the most common model-based engineering approaches are reviewed and compared regarding their models and model transformations. In this examination the missing existence of an inverse transformation (a so-called text-to-model transformation, T2M) of a typical model transformation (a so-called model-to-text transformation, M2T) is identified. That discovery may well hold the key to the realization of a so-called round-trip engineering. The required existence of the inverse transformation to this round-trip engineering is then generically postulated as having the nature of a pattern recognition problem. For illustration purposes and a better understanding of the interpretation of the inverse transformation as a pattern recognition problem, a case study for the reconstruction of an abstract model from the concrete model is given using CAD-Data of a satellite. Since CAD models belong to geometry, dimensionless geometric moment invariants play a key role in the generic solution of the pattern recognition problem contained in this example.