Functional Requirement Mapping as a Framework for Concurrent Engineering

Abstract

The complexity of current engineered products has created an environment of information overload for the personnel responsible for the many stages of product engineering and development. The increasingly competitive global market has created an added demand for shorter design and production cycles. This paper will examine a technique described as functional requirement mapping (FRM) as a flexible framework for organizing a comparative design process or trade study. An organized design process is one characterized by the ability to structure hybrid sets of information which define results of current design efforts, future tasks and their priority, various metrics, and a presentation format for decision making. A number of current concepts will be addressed within the scope of this topic, including axiomatic design theory and object-oriented paradigms of software engineering. An example case will be used to illustrate the concepts presented in this paper. The contribution of this paper will be the presentation of a theoretical basis and prototype model for development of a concurrent engineering software application.