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5.5.2 A Generic Methodology for Partitioning Product Architectures
Author(s) -
Gaso Berislav,
Whitcomb Clifford,
Igenbergs Eduard,
Schulz Armin
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
incose international symposium
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2334-5837
DOI - 10.1002/j.2334-5837.2002.tb02562.x
Subject(s) - modular programming , computer science , modular design , cluster analysis , heuristic , variety (cybernetics) , product (mathematics) , binary number , industrial engineering , artificial intelligence , programming language , engineering , mathematics , geometry , arithmetic
Industrial companies can gain major competitive advantages if they possess the ability to bring products to market faster while at the same time fulfilling customer desire for greater variety. An effective way for achieving this advantage is to develop modular product architectures. This paper presents a repeatable methodology for designing modular products that explicitly considers multiple product attributes (as metrics) and customer preferences. Furthermore, it introduces external and internal metrics for architectures and combines them together with the functional analysis approach in an exceedingly powerful tool called Element Modeling Language (EML). Subsequently, it is shown how EML‐structures are translated into a system of binary and non‐binary matrices, called the Matrix Modularization System (MMS), which can be handled mathematically. Two type‐of clustering algorithms, based on heuristic methods and function flows as clustering parameters, are introduced.