While there are strong motivations to include electronics and software in products, there is also a powerful set of challenges with a common theme that consistently plagues manufacturers: getting engineering disciplines to work together.

In fact, three of the challenges listed -- synchronization of mechanical and electrical design representations (68%), disciplines use different data management tools (36%), and disciplines use different design processes (25%) --are all symptoms of one problem: manufacturers’ struggle to get mechanical, electrical, and software engineers to work together from technical and process perspectives. The overall takeaway is that the way you used to run product development won’t let you succeed in the future. To address these challenges, some fundamental changes must be made.