Supporting product design decision with a SysML design history Assistant

Abstract

With products reaching the whole world and being sold by thousands or millions the responsibility of designers has never been higher. A design mistake can cause - among others - physical damages, high costs or pollution of diverse types. Each mistake has consequences, whether before or after sale to various actors (manufacturing company, users, recycling company, etc.) and has to be avoided. Research is starting to integrate environmental impacts within the Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) approach and particularly within System Modeling Language (SysML) as a tool to foresee design decisions according to previous gained knowledge. Following this, the research holds on existing foundations and proposes to extend current research efforts into a new SysML Assistant to capture the essence of product design and thereby support product development decisions. This paper focuses on the first part of the research, proposing design principles and warnings from requirements via the SysML Assistant. When facing a decision, designers can question the Assistant about examples of what had been designed before in similar or different domains. Depending on the request, designers receive, a formatted object containing several solutions or design principles (requirements, specification, use cases, test cases, warnings) for possible implementation. Various benefits are foreseen with the proposed research. First, a reduced design development time with an increased quality of products in the long term. Second, a reduction of product environmental impacts as well as repeated design mistakes. Third, an incentive to designers competitivity to achieve better design.