Decomposition in Concurrent Design for Technical Complex Systems
[attachment=16272]

1. Introduction
Concurrent engineering is defined as a systematic approach to the integrated, simultaneous design of technical systems, products and processes, including manufacturing technical support.
The approach of concurrent engineering considers all the elements, beginning from the design and including quality, cost, schedule and user requirements.


2. Case study
Consider an electromechanical system that includes two subsystems, an electrical and a mechanical system. Consider that system design is better if two teams participate to the system design. Team A is in charge of electrical system and team B is in charge of mechanical system.

Analysis of the design process
Whenever a task-task incidence matrix decomposes into mutually separable submatrices, no analysis of relationship between groups is needed. However, if nonempty elements exist below or above the block diagonal matrix, analysis of the relationship between groups is required in order to reduce the interdependence and increase the degree of concurrency of the design process.

Benefits from decomposition in design
Grouping tasks involved in the design process allows one to determine a potential group of tasks that might be performed simultaneously. The degree to which the tasks can be performed simultaneously depends on the quality of clusters and the nature of dependency between groups of tasks