A new approach for evaluating design dependencies in product architectures

Reduced design complexity is one of the most important aspects when designing flexible product architectures. In terms of a design's complexity, reducing the number of design dependencies between subsystems and components can help reduce the amount of redesign effort given a change in product structure or desired functionality. Moreover, as a product gets more complex, it becomes more difficult to account for all of the direct or indirect changes in the system, which may lead to component incompatibilities, design errors, and reliability problems. This paper introduces a new approach to calculate design dependencies within a product architecture that incorporates all direct and indirect connections in the system. The test the proposed approach, a preliminary analysis of seven electro-mechanical products is conducted. The strengths and limitations of the proposed approach are discussed based on the preliminary results along with future work.