Consistency, integration, and reuse in multi-disciplinary design processes

Modern product development becomes an increasingly difficult and complex activity. Issues in such product development can best be managed during the design process. An analysis of issues will show that guarding consistency, facilitating integration, and reusing design information, are good ways to manage the design process. The approach in this research resulted in the Architecture Modeling Framework, which integrates many modeling concepts and methods into a single framework. This framework provides a common machine-readable Architecture Modeling Language that can describe both the system architecture and information flows in the design process. Also described are automation mechanisms for this common language in various design tools and a diagram editor. The Architecture Models themselves define multiple views and mappings, from the function and system decomposition and requirements to the various aspects and domain. They can model the design process in terms of shared parameters, the interfaces between design aspects, and their relation to requirements and functionality, and define the required input/output parameters of design tasks and external models, and connect these to the architectural context.