A Framework for Early Evaluation of Functional Product Structures

摘要

This paper proposes a framework which supports the assessment and optimisation of the quality of products in very early phases of product development. First, an introduction is given to the notion of architecture and its establishment during the lifecycle process. Then a set of metrics is presented which is used to evaluate structural properties of a product architecture. This evaluation mechanism also serves to optimise a product structure towards an optimal representation of these properties. Finally we will show that structural properties support quality aspects that can be used to determine desirable product structures for a given design problem.