Modularity and the Independence of Functional Requirements in Designing Complex Systems

Abstract

Abstract We are investigating principles for the design of product structures that can be readily adapted in response to large changes in customer requirements. In this paper, we report on a part of our investigation, namely, the effect of Suh’s independence axiom on achieving a modular design for a hierarchical system. We demonstrate that there is a relationship between achieving functional independence and reducing the interactions between modules by comparing the functional independence of several designs reflecting different requirements on module interfaces for a portal frame. Open research questions are identified. Our desire in writing this paper is to describe some work in progress and foster discussion rather than offering a prescription for solution.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 58 citations exist upstream.