In automotive industry, to manage the market-driven challenges in the form of soaring product variants and decreasing model cycles successfully, new methods and IT solutions are required, especially in the field of production engineering. In this context, mechatronics as a key technology will play a decisive role in the future. This mechatronic issue refers not only to the increased use of mechatronic components in real production systems but also to the use of mechatronic data models in production engineering phases. Apart from their main characteristics, this contribution highlights different application scenarios of developing, using and processing these cross-domain data models. Three mechatronic-based applications are introduced: Functional engineering, data exchange via AutomationML and virtual commissioning. Apart from the most important characteristics of these innovative solutions, the individual engineering workflows as well as the links between these topics are illustrated both from a scientific and user-oriented point of view. So far, a majority of the pictured aspects could be successfully executed using real production-related examples in the field of automotive industry. At present, the seamless implementation with the special focus on profitability aspects is being verified and evaluated critically. Although much progress has been made in these mechatronic-oriented topic fields, following issues still remain to be addressed in further activities: Further developments and industrialization of the open crossfunctional data exchange format AutomationML as base for the seamless data integration between the fields of digital factory and automation engineering. Organizational issues (e.g. definition of tasks distributions and responsibility areas, cooperation models between the OEM and their suppliers) have to be critically analyzed and adapted to these new mechatronic-oriented production engineering topics.