Smarter products. You hear them mentioned in trade journals, in boardrooms and in the press releases of your competitors. What are smarter products? How do you make them? And how do you make them better and faster than your competition? Whether you operate in the automotive, aerospace, telecommunications or electronics marketplace, business trends dictate that you need to deliver innovative products that incorporate advances in software, electronics and hardware to deliver a customizable experience to users.

The key to creating this new class of offerings is to elevate software development to a strategic business process while leveraging advanced modeling capabilities to better integrate your different design disciplines. The purpose of this paper is to explore smarter products and discover some best practices that businesses can employ to build smarter products and drive innovative technologies.