Chains of Function Delivery: The Role for Product Architecture
Abstract
This research intends to improve three areas of team performance in concept design: (1) the team's understanding and recognition of the product architecture, (2) the team's ability to document integration issues and risks, and (3) the team's ability to judge whether a product concept is worthy of further pursuit. Many of the high impact decisions made in concept design revolve around integration issues: how the product's physical elements work together to deliver the performance characteristics, or functions. The product architecture, a singularly important characteristic of the product, is in great part determined by the mapping of the product's functions to the physical elements that deliver those functions. Integration issues pose a unique kind of integration risk: the chance that adequately designed individual elements will not function properly when connected to form the product, or cannot be assembled and debugged easily and quickly. During concept design, a development team must recognize integration issues in the functional physical mapping so they can assess the associated integration risk, and judge their concepts on this basis. Since information is weak and fragmented during concept design, performing a formal analysis of the problem is a significant challenge.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Feb 01, 1998
- Accession Number
- ADA359027
Entities
People
- Timothy W. Cunningham
Organizations
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology