A Planning Method for Integration of Large-scale Engineering Systems

Complex products and large engineering systems require massive efforts to integrate designs at various levels: product and production plans into components, components into sub-systems, sub-systems into systems, and systems into a quality product. We define the product development integration problem as the challenge to coordinate the engineering activities at each level in order to achieve an integrated system in the final product. We have developed a threestep method to plan solutions to such integration challenges. The first step documents the decomposition of the system into components. Second, the interactions between the components are identified using methods based on various types of interactions. Finally, the components are clustered into systems around the integration challenges defined by the network of interactions.