MULTI-LEVEL FLOW-BASED MARKOV CLUSTERING FOR DESIGN STRUCTURE MATRICES

For decomposition and integration of systems one requires extensive knowledge on system structure. A Design Structure Matrix (DSM) can provide a simple, compact and visual representation of dependencies between system elements. By permuting the rows and columns of a DSM using a clustering algorithm, the underlying structure of a system can be revealed. In this paper, we present a new DSM clustering algorithm based upon Markov clustering. The developed clustering algorithm is able to cope with the presence of 'bus' elements, returns multi-level clusters, is capable of clustering both directed as well as undirected DSMs, and allows the user to control the cluster results by tuning only three input parameters.