Information rich mapping requirement to product architecture through functional system deployment: The multi entity domain approach

Successful transformation of design information from customer requirements to design implementation is critical for engineering design. As systems become complex the tracking of how customer requirements are implement becomes difficult. Existing approaches suggest so called domain modelling for mapping requirements to architecture. These approaches do not fully support the steps and information created during product design synthesis. Design Specifications used to guide the design are often documented in text based documents, outside the design models. This results in lack of traceability which may impede the ability to evolve, maintain or reuse systems. In this paper the Multi Entity Domain Approach (MEDA) is presented. The approach combines different design information within the domain views, incorporates both Software and Hardware design and supports iterative requirements definition. The results suggest that it is possible to present design information in structural domain views, presenting more elaborate information of the design synthesis than provided by previous approaches. However, further validation in a practical project setting is required to validate the approach.