Systems engineering of products, processes, and organizations requires tools and techniques for system decomposition and integration. A design structure matrix (DSM) provides a simple, compact, and visual representation of a complex system that supports innovative solutions to decomposition and integration problems. The advantages of DSMs vis-a-vis alternative system representation and analysis techniques have led to their increasing use in a variety of contexts, including product development; project planning, project management, systems engineering, and organization design. This paper reviews two types of DSMs, static and time-based DSMs, and four DSM applications: (1) component-based or architecture DSM, useful for modeling system component relationships and facilitating appropriate architectural decomposition strategies; (2) team-based or organization DSM, beneficial for designing integrated organization structures that account for team interactions; (3) activity-based or schedule DSM, advantageous for modeling the information flow among process activities; and (4) parameter-based (or low-level schedule) DSM, effective for integrating low-level design processes based on physical design parameter relationships. A discussion of each application is accompanied by an industrial example. The review leads to conclusions regarding the benefits of DSMs in practice and barriers to their use. The paper also discusses research directions and new DSM applications, both of which may be approached with a perspective on the four types of DSMs and their relationships.

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Applying the design structure matrix to system decomposition and integration problems: a review and new directions

http://sagheb.persiangig.com/Backup/4/scienc.pdf

A critical review of Knowledge-Based Engineering: An identification of research challenges

The design structure matrix (DSM), also called the dependency structure matrix, has become a widely used modeling framework across many areas of research and practice. The DSM brings advantages of simplicity and conciseness in representation, and, supported by appropriate analysis, can also highlight important patterns in system architectures (design structures), such as modules and cycles. A literature review in 2001 cited about 100 DSM papers; there have been over 1000 since. Thus, it is useful to survey the latest DSM extensions and innovations to help consolidate progress and identify promising opportunities for further research. This paper surveys the DSM literature, primarily from archival journals, and organizes the developments pertaining to building, displaying, analyzing, and applying product, process, and organization DSMs. It then addresses DSM applications in other domains, as well as recent developments with domain mapping matrices (DMMs) and multidomain matrices (MDMs). Overall, DSM methods are becoming more mainstream, especially in the areas of engineering design, engineering management, management/organization science, and systems engineering. Despite significant research contributions, however, DSM awareness seems to be spreading more slowly in the realm of project management.

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Design Structure Matrix Extensions and Innovations: A Survey and New Opportunities

The article aims to identify the scientific challenges and point out future research directions on Cost Engineering. The research areas covered in this article include Design Cost; Manufacturing Cost; Operating Cost; Life Cycle Cost; Risk and Uncertainty management and Affordability Engineering. Collected information at the Academic Forum on Cost Engineering held at Cranfield University in 2008 and further literature review findings are presented. The forum set the scope of the Cost Engineering research, a brainstorming was held on the forum and literatures were further reviewed to understand the current and future practices in cost engineering. The main benefits of the article include coverage of the current research on cost engineering from different perspectives and the future research areas on Cost Engineering.

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Cost Engineering for manufacturing: Current and future research

https://orbit.dtu.dk/files/132029753/Revised_Manuscript_no_highlight.pdf

The documentation of product configuration systems

Automated systems for variant design can be used for design iterations in order to guide the designer towards solutions that are optimized with respect to weight, cost, lead time, or other vital properties. In this work such a system for computational design problems is presented together with examples of its application. The system performs design computations, computed aided design model configuration, production process planning, and cost estimation. The design rules and algorithms are captured in knowledge "chunks," which are human readable as well as computer executable. The workflow governing the execution of these rules and algorithms is created using a dependency structure matrix (DSM) which is included in the system. Particular attention has been given to the need for transparency, modularity, and longevity of the system, which is a prerequisite for such a system to become a viable tool in industrial applications. Experiences from the proposed system indicate that the DSM workflow manager in combination with a human readable and modularized knowledge base provides clarity and transparency for both developer and user of the system.

A Transparent Design System for Iterative Product Development

With today’s high product variety and shorter life cycles in automobile manufacturing, every new car design must be adapted to existing production facilities so that these facilities can be used for the manufacturing of several car models. In order to ensure this, collaboration between engineering design and production engineering has to be supported. Sharing information is at the core of collaborative engineering. By implementing an ontology approach, work within domains requirement management, engineering design and production engineering can be integrated. An ontology approach, based on an information model implemented in a computer tool, supports work in the different domains and their collaboration. The main objectives of the proposed approach are: supporting the formation of requirement specifications for products and processes, improved and simplified information retrieval for designers and process planners, forward traceability from changes in product systems to manufacturing systems, backward traceability from changes in manufacturing system to product systems, and the elimination of redundant or multiple versions of requirement specifications by simplifying the updating and maintenance of the information.

An Ontology Approach To Collaborative Engineering For Producibility

Customer requirements provide objectives and constraints for all phases of the product development process For complex system products with a high degree of customization, it is no mean task to ensure that the right persons at the right time have ready access to the selected requirement specifications that they should adhere to and strive to satisfy In the present work a systematic sequence of development phases associated with computer implemented information structures for requirements, functions and systems have been studied at three companies with widely different products and business scenarios Although individual adaptations are required, the overall processes for requirement decomposition and propagation appear surprisingly similar To fully exploit the potential of such information systems, many companies would benefit from also including knowledge structures in their product models Fundamental product and process knowledge often evolves slowly over time, can be gradually upgraded and be reused many times It also constitutes one of the company’s most valuable assets and should be carefully maintained and enhanced In the work presented here a few different approaches to integrating knowledge structures into the total product information structure have been developed and exemplified for the three companies studiedCopyright © 2003 by ASME

Requirement-Driven Design Processes With Integrated Knowledge Structures

Matching Design Tasks To Knowledge Based Software Tools

For many products the adaption to customer specifications is essential and requires flexible product design and manufacture while maintaining competitive pricing. A large category of design work in industry has the character of redesign of an existing product concept in terms of dimensional changes, topology variations and configuration of components. In order to evaluate design proposals, costs, which are controlled by the product design, selected materials and manufacturing processes, need to be estimated. Cost estimates are normally based on the manufacturing process plans, which can only be formed when production preparation is finalised. The widespread industrial use of solid modelling opens up new possibilities to automate this process. The purpose of this work is to demonstrate and test a method to extract product information from a CAD model to allow process planning and cost calculation to be carried out automatically for a given class of products. With such a system cost estimates can be made available to the designer the instant a design proposal has been presented. This allows for design iterations to be carried out in order to govern the design work towards solutions with an optimal balance between product and production properties.

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Staffan Sunnersjö

Papers

A Transparent Design System for Iterative Product Development

An Ontology Approach To Collaborative Engineering For Producibility

Requirement-Driven Design Processes With Integrated Knowledge Structures

Matching Design Tasks To Knowledge Based Software Tools

An Automated Cost Estimating System for Variant Design Based on the Method of Successive Calculus