Orthogonal array experiment for architecting a system of systems responding to small boat attacks

In this work we solve the problem of architecting a conceptual, near-term, cost-effective system of systems (SoS) to respond to small boats used by terrorists to attack maritime commerce traffic and critical shore infrastructures in the United States, by formulating the architecting problem as an assignment problem which is then solved using the orthogonal array experiment. Also known as the Taguchi method in quality control, the orthogonal array experiment is efficient for this class of problems. The optimality of the resulting architecture, called optimal cost-effective architecture, is validated against a heuristically developed architecture and an optimal effective architecture; the latter is obtained also with the orthogonal array experiment approach. The main purpose of this paper is an exploratory application of the Taguchi method to architecting a system of systems. The principal results of the Regular Paper *Author to whom all correspondence should be addressed (e-mail: [email protected]). Systems Engineering, Vol. 10, No. 3, 2007 © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.