To cite this version:Eric Bonjour, Samuel Deniaud, Maryvonne Dulmet, Ghassen Harmel. A fuzzy method for propagating functional architecture constraints to physical architecture.. Journal of Mechanical Design, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, 2009, 131 (6) The product domains are mainly composed of three sub domains [1], which are:• Customer expectations and life-cycle requirements,• Functions which are arranged in the functional architecture,• Sub-systems and components which are arranged in the physical (or design) architecture.These domains form different views of the product at different levels of abstraction. Requirements correspond to external functions and constraints that the product has to satisfy. These requirements are fulfilled through the realization of the system functions that in turn are realized by the integration of different product components.In the engineering design field, researchers have developed architecting rules and methods to map functions to physical components [2][3][4][5][6]. Other approaches view the functional model of a system as being described by an abstract functional decomposition that may, but does not need to, have a direct mapping onto physical decomposition of assemblies and subassemblies [7]. Ulrich [3] defines product architectures as "the scheme by which the function of a product is allocated to physical components." A key feature of product architecture is the degree to which it is modular or integrative [8]. In modular architectures, functional models of the product map one-to-one to its physical components. On the other hand, in integrative architectures "several functional elements are each implemented by more than one component, and several components each implement more than one functional element" [3]. In real design situations, designers have to make a trade-off between modular and integral architectures.Hence, many products are hybrid [9]. Their architectures are not fully modular or integral and lie somewhere between the two extremes. The above definitions are mainly based on the functionality of a module. There is another common way of defining a module by only focusing on interactions between elements. Baldwin and Clark [4] define a module as "a unit whose structural elements are powerfully connected among themselves and relatively weakly connected to elements in other units". Browning [8] defines integrative elements as interacting with all of the modules without belonging to any module.Research, concerning platform-based product development and product family design [10][11][12][13][14][15][16], has received huge interest over the last decade since it aims at providing methods to identify common modules and generate product variants with distinctive modules (commonality vs variety). According to [10], a non-unique component is defined as a component that is present in at least two products in a product family. It can be either common between the products sharing this component or variant across products.Overviews of current research status on th...
