A framework for complex product architecture analysis using an integrated approach

Contemporary design decomposition and synthesis analytical tasks at the conceptual design stage rely on functional and structural modelling approaches. There is a wide diversity of elements used by various modelling approaches for information and representation of product architecture, which incurs difficulties for multidisciplinary engineers working across different phases of design in capturing, visualising, sharing and tracing consistent yet common knowledge and elements across the function and structure domains. This prompts for fixation of detail and common modelling knowledge across both functional and structural analytical approaches which are also critical from automatised software perspective. A limitation of the existing approaches is that they tend to focus more on what' and less on how' (and vice versa). This article proposes an integrated conceptual product architecting approach that combines and expands the functional and structural modelling approaches, enabling capturing and tracing knowledge coherently through a common binding domain. This is underpinned by the view that most interaction requirements among the physical components during structural modelling can be derived from functional modelling. The proposed integrated approach is underpinned by the critical analysis and synthesis of the existing approaches in the literature dealing with functional and structural architecture analyses, integrated within a multiple domain matrix to fuse the knowledge of both solution-independent (functional) and solution-dependent (structural) analyses. The proposed framework is illustrated with a case study of solar robot toy, followed by discussion and suggestions for future work.