Regulatory Compliance-aware System Change Management via an Ontology-based Approach

To meet customer demands, the automotive industry is characterized by high levels of variability, essential for product diversification. The ongoing transition to higher levels of automation and connectivity is witnessing an ongoing increase in regulatory requirements, which sometimes overlap or sometimes exhibit interdependence characteristics. Hence, the introduction of new features, in the context of an item increment, may make the item transit to a more demanding regulatory space. Typically, the impact of the change is handled manually. No automated system change management, aware of regulatory compliance, is available. In our previous work, we proposed an ontology-based representation for managing product variability and re-configuration. We briefly illustrated its usage by focusing on the variability of regulatory requirements due to different jurisdictions and their impact on the product. In this paper, we further expand and use our ontology-based representation to realize an automated regulatory compliance-aware system change management. Each system change can be validated by constraints and, as a consequence, variability manager may more easily detect missing evidence that is required for compliance. Via rules, missing but required features can be automatically generated and connected. Specifically, we illustrate the usage of our ontology-based representation by considering a product increment within the product line of power-operated window lifters. The increment, enabling remote closing and opening, calls for compliance with regulations that are related not only to safety, but also to cybersecurity.