Defining product architectures.

Eric Bonjour (1) , Ghassen Harmel (1) , Maryvonne Dulmet (1)

1 FEMTO-ST - Franche-Comté Électronique Mécanique, Thermique et Optique - Sciences et Technologies (UMR 6174)

Identifying product architectures is recognized as a critical activity during the preliminary design phase since the selected architecture has a great impact on the product quality, on the organization of the following phases of the design project and on the global performance of this project. System architects need methods to pre-determine cohesive modules and integrative elements. In this paper we present a new method to jointly design the functional and physical architectures. Starting from an incidence matrix that represents the couplings between elements of two domains (here, functions and components), it generates a Design Structure Matrix (DSM) for each domain. Each DSM is then rearranged by a clustering algorithm in order to reveal a "satisfactory" architecture. To illustrate our approach, we present an industrial case study in the framework of a new automobile engine development project.

Mots clés: DSM; Modular design; product architecture; DSM.

Domaines: Automatique / Robotique

Eric Bonjour, Ghassen Harmel, Maryvonne Dulmet. Defining product architectures.. Extended Product and Process Analysis aNd Design, EXPPAND'08., Mar 2008, Bordeaux, France. 8 p. ⟨hal-00341895⟩