Methodology to associate the Product Design and Project Management processes in a common platform

Citlalih Gutiérrez Estrada1, Sergio Díaz Zagal1, Eréndira Rendón Lara1, Celso Hernández Tenorio1

and Rafael Cruz Reyes1

1Instituto Tecnológico de Toluca, Av. Ins. Tecnológico de Toluca s/n, Metepec Edo. de México {citlalihg, sdiaz, erendon, chernandezt, rcruz}@ittoluca.edu.mx

Abstract

The purpose of the work herein described is to simplify the systems design task. The research uses several standards and tools as reference points to define a methodology by associating two processes: a creation plan and a guide to implement the system. Considering this, the research carried out for this paper defines a methodology useful in System Design. The method starts from a common-modeled platform and defines the way in which two processes closely linked to System Development interact: Product Design and Project Management. Currently, both processes occur independently from each other and each of them has its own tools and methods, therefore generating cost and time losses. The purpose of this research is to identify the technologies and knowledge obtained from both processes that will result in highly functional systems.

Keywords: Product Design, Project Management, Structuro-

Functional Modules, Common Platform, System Design.

1. Introduction

Systems development implies a very complex process, which includes supervising diverse issues like costs, results, terms, risks, etc., operated by different procedures. The work herein described focused on these issues, relevant to design systems with increasing quality and performance. Other issues have been simultaneously studied, including human, material and informatics elements, methods and procedures, so they act jointly to comply with the system’s functionality [1].

The exchange between these two issues constitutes a significant topic in this research, as the association between methods and processes must consider the internal difficulties derived from systems design and the impact of human, material and software elements [2].

The present work proposes a method that integrates product design and project management processes issues.Our research matched these processes and existing tools.

For product design, we used the HiLeS platform [3], created at the Laboratory of Systems Analysis and

Architecture (LAAS) at Toulouse, France, as part of the co-operative project LAAS-MOCAS and MIS, ISI and OLC research groups. HiLeS is used for the following approach: the client’s requirements are described in natural language as specifications, and they are then translated at the descendent design stage, obtaining a virtual prototype that will verify if the established goals and needs are fulfilled. This approach allows identifying technical difficulties and specifications based on the system functionality. The project management process starts by defining tasks; a preliminary ordering is carried out to create a specific number of scenarios; for this, we use the tool GESOS [4] to select and optimize scenarios, which provide a project’s global view. The project manager uses the GESOS solutions to choose only those that comply with the initial goals and decide a final work plan. Non-functional requirements are identified through this approach, including the identification of providers, defining labor and resources that will be used, etc. [2].

The product design and project management processes were done separately before, each with its own tools and methods.

This work describes the way to associate both processes through a common platform. Structuro-functional modules [5] are therefore created, allowing for the transition from the design to the planning phases, beginning at the task definition stage. These modules are the main goal of this research.

2. Methodological Basis

This proposal is based on recommendations stated by the Electronic Industries Alliance EIA-632 [6]. This standard allows developing systems and considers several processes for systems design, ranging from the creation of products to market implementation. EIA-632 is organized in thirteen processes, grouped in five sets; in this work, we focused our interest in three of these five groups: planning, system verification and definition of solution.

EIA-632 recommendations include making the 5 groups of processes to interact. Therefore, according to our field of interest, this standard is the most complete. However, this standard offers no definition of the tools or methods to work reciprocally these processes. This is why

326IEEE IRI 2010, August 4-6, 2010, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA978-1-4244-8099-9/10/$26.00 ©2010 IEEE

this work is unique, as it clearly indicates the interaction between the different processes of systems development and the tools to use from a common platform.

3. Design – Management Association

The design-management association proposal is based on the “Y” lifecycle model, which integrates each internal process to design and management [1]. Figure 1 depicts this approach, which has 3 levels of contribution:1. From the product design side, support to the

specifications formalization process [7]. 2. From the management side, a focus on a proposal

about two processes, defined as weaving and partitioning in the projection of functions over components [2], [5] and

3. The third contribution was focused on the project management and the task definition process, refined by the standard work breakdown structure method; this process arrived to a better proposal for system planning [1], [4].

Figure 1. Design-management “Y” lifecycle

An explanation of this process follows, starting with the technical example of a biochip-manufacturing robot, as depicted in Figure 2. The biochip is a supporting tool for genetic analysis. It is used to find particular DNA sequences during the analysis of specific DNA. The biochip is composed by a tiny glass support, to which several thousand DNA binds are inserted. It is formed by materialized matrices points, referred to as units of hybridization (UH).

This biochip-manufacturing robot was built around an innovation: micro-injectors use 4 injection matrices, each acting from the four DNA-constituting nucleotides (thiamine, cytosine, guanine and adenine).

Using this system, we focused our study on the functional behavior to be displayed by the robot, especially on the specifications described in the document

of requirements. The demands stated in the document of requirements were met, among which we have:�Functional requirements, clearly indicating the need to:

functionalize DNA chips and automate the process.�Requirements with respect to results, considering: a

strong deposit density (1000/cm²), the number of sounds (of 1000) and a fast, cost-effective manufacturing process.�And interface requirements, like: free selection of the

sequence to be deposited and the process manual control.

Figure 2. Biochip

At this stage, the contribution to the design process was to formalize specifications; the document of requirements containing the demands was analyzed for this purpose, and the result was the HiLeS logical modeling of the system. The work starts at the natural language specified project specifications. These specifications are translated, formalized and later represented on a graphic editor using structural and functional blocks and Petri nets. The next stage involves validating and simulating the formalized representation with another tool, TINA [8]. Finally, a complete representation of the structure over the VHDL-AMS language is generated to make a temporary simulation of the process.

The transition of UML diagrams to HiLeS formalism is therefore carried out directly and automatically.

The greatest contribution of this work is at this level, the stage that goes from functions to models. A process to define structuro-functional blocks was therefore proposed from projecting functional blocks over component blocks; for this, aggregation, PBS standard and projection tools are required, as well as the functions that will create modules, according to the MDA recommendations. This approach allows the capitalization and upgrade of processes, with an impact on the cost of future projects.

When the system functional description is finished, a physical, structural and organic description of the system is required. Work at this level of approach consisted of analyzing the way to integrate the system with the physical components; for this purpose, the product breakdown structure elements (PBS) tool was used to break down the system organically into components, and to design structuro-functional modules (building blocks of the EIA-632).

This process is carried out as follows: the system is divided into subsystems, then sub-subsystems, components, sub-components, until reaching more

327

elemental constituents, referred to as parts. This determines the system tools, that is, which components will be used by the system to carry out its purpose. The PBS allows making an inventory and distinguish every component required to integrate the system… this is how the organic breakdown passes directly to the organic modeling by using HiLeS.

Once system components are considered and functions are grouped, the next stage is to project functions over components. The projection process is based on the coherent association of the functions obtained from the functional representation of PBS, depending on demands and non-functional criteria.

The result after the projection of functions over components is called Modular Architectural Representation. This procedure defines projection-generated interfaces in relation to the functional architecture projected over components.

As for the project management process, work was carried out to highlight the design information, which aims for planning; it is therefore necessary to define activities to be executed. The task definition process must be carried out considering which task should be done for each structuro-functional module.

At a later stage, every project-derived task is listed and arranged according to precedence or priority, raised problem and established goals. The result is a graph describing the order relation between every activity.

The result of analyzing this project graph offers a preliminary technical specification of requirements and a preliminary ordering, identified as pre-planning stage. A GANTT diagram serves for this purpose.

The result of using this diagram allows viewing the group of alternatives for each task to be carried out to design the system. At this level, the Gantt diagram considers estimated data to establish approximate costs and terms and to carry out the preliminary ordering of activities. This stage allows the examination of other solutions that may be considered. The GESOS tool therefore supports the selection and best use of every activity viewed.

GESOS proceeds by using genetic algorithms and economic criteria that utilize Taguchi’s rules [9], aiming to find the individuals that better satisfy the group of criteria of each approximation in a convergent way. Once the preliminary ordering is set, we made a consultation among suppliers to find the potential provider that will develop solutions for needs.

4. Logical-behavioral modeling

To formalize demands from model transformation, we proposed working with the UML formalism, which offers a method to design systems by using graph diagrams; from

these, four were considered in compliance with this work’s context:

The context diagram allows the visualization of a first useful system representation. The use case diagram enriches the context diagram by specifying the type of interaction between actors and system. The sequence diagrams generated describe the dynamic behavior of the biochip robot in the context of specific functioning. And finally, Diagrams of activities allow proposing a terminal functional architecture and a global logic of system functioning.

Complying with recommendation EIA-632, this work carried out the first transformations to models.

These four diagrams provide all the information to obtain a functional logical representation of the system when considering interaction between the design and management processes.

5. Results

Figure 3 shows the relation between standard EIA-632 and our proposal to associate two processes in a single model shared in a common platform. Several tests can be made using this figure. The first stage of standard EIA-632’s reference process corresponds to the functional descendent design. This standard starts with the system’s technical considerations, which corresponds to the Design Process; this takes into account the client’s specifications and requirements, which then serve as basis to create a technical design process that ends with a virtual prototype. To create a virtual prototype in this process, the functional and organic descriptions are fused, corresponding to the second stage of standard EIA-632 in the Management Process. The last stage of standard EIA-632 corresponds to the association of both processes, generating common and shared information that can be used to obtain catalogues, cards, modules, etc., which can be reused in future projects.

Besides this analysis of standard EIA-632 and our work, and in order to know precisely the evolution of the procedure previously carried out with two independent processes into the new alternative of associating both processes, aiming to make them match and to integrate the design information, we include the analysis made to our common platform proposal during the last four years, with excellent results obtained in practical projects involving the development of software in the fields of education [10], robotics and medicine and in three multidisciplinary projects [11], including chemistry, mechanics, electronics, electrical, etc.

There are currently several companies and institutions already applying methodologies and techniques related to the design and management processes independently, resulting in a lack of compliance with the user’s requests and a defective final product. This problem arises from the

328

lack of a mechanism to associate processes, exponentially increasing time and cost.

Figure 3. Correspondence between standard EIA-632 and our methodology

Following this idea, Figure 4 depicts an approximate increase in time of 40% with respect to the stage of requirements, derived from the time used to carry out the analysis process to determine requirements. The design stage took 30% more time; however, the coding, tests and maintenance stages took 40% less time. These results prove the functionality of the proposal and feasibility of information reuse. We must mention that, up to this moment, the process is carried out manually; however, software is being currently designed and parallel research is being carried out to make the process run automatically.

Figure 4. Results of the methodology functionality

6. Conclusions

The work offered here is based on the innovating idea of associating the information between the design and management processes, backed by a significant number of companies, including Airbus, EDS, etc., regarding a platform designed in Toulouse. Our work proposed a method to design systems by dividing a shared model; the model will offer a complete view and will consider

functional and non-functional issues to design quality, high performance systems.

7. Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the PROMEP for the support in carrying out this project, which is part of the project with code ITTOL-PTC-003, and the DGEST for the project with code TOL-MCCC-2009-202.

We thank the support of the LESIA and LAAS laboratories in Toulouse, France, for their kindness offered for made this researh.

8. References

[1] C. Gutiérrez, C. Baron, L. Geneste, et al., “How to interconnect Product Design and Project Management including Experience Feedback and Reusability Requirements”, IEEE 2005 International Conference on Information Reuse and Integration, Las Vegas, NV, USA., August 2005. [2] C. Gutiérrez., C. Baron, H. Duarte, D. Esteve, “Design and Project Management: their coordination on a platform of interoperable tools”, INCOM2006, Saint Etienne, France, Mai 2006. [3] J. C Hamon, D. Esteve, P. Pampagnin. “HiLeS Designer: A Tool for Systems Design”. CONVERGENCE 03: Aeronautics, Automobile & Space International Symposium. Paris (France), 1-3 December 2003. [4] Chelouah R., Baron C., at al., “Ant colonies algorithm and Genetic algorithm hybridized with taboo and greedy searches to optimize a project management application”, Revue, Laboratoire d'Étude des Systèmes Informatiques et Automatiques (LESIA), 2006. [5] J. P. Meinadier, “Ingénierie et intégration des systèmes”, Éditorial HERMES, Paris 1998, pp. 31-45.[6] EIA-632. Electronic Industries Alliance, Government Electronics and Information Technology Association Engineering Department, EIA STANDARD. Processes for Engineering a System, January 1999. [7] J. B. Bouissieres, “Expression du besoin & cahier des charges fonctionnel: Élaboration et rédaction”, AFNOR, Août 2006, pp. 21-28.[8] Berthomieu, M. Menasche, An Enumerative Approach for Analyzing Time Petri Nets, IFIP Congress 1983, Paris, 1983. [9] G. Steele, S. Byers, D. Young, and R. Moore, “An analysis of injection modeling by Taguchi methods”, Proceedings of ANTEC’88 Conference, 1988. [10] Rocio P., Citlalih G, Sergio D. Angelica M., Rene A., Rafael C., Claude B. “Actor Modeling For Project Design Using UML”. Revista Digital Científica y Tecnológica e-Gnosis” ISSN 1665-5745, Octubre 2009. [11] Citlalih G. E., Sergio D. Z., et al, “Interaction of Processes and Tools to Meet the System Development Criteria”, SPECIAL ISSUE: Advances in Intelligent and Information Technologies Vol. 38, Instituto Politécnico Nacional (IPN), ISSN 1870-4096, October 2008.

329