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to reduce the coding, extension, and maintenance effort. As computer hardware
rapidly evolves and the need for large-scale software systems grows, productivity is
increasingly more important in software engineering. The so-called “software crisis”
is closely tied to the productivity of software development (Pressman, 1997).
Software development requires the translation of good abstract ideas into clear
design specifications. Subsequent delivery of the software product in moderate-to-
large-scale projects requires effective definition, requirements of translation into
useful codes, and assignments for a team of software belts and engineers to meet
deadlines in the presence of resource constraints. This section explores how axiomatic
design may be integrated into the software DFSS process (Chapter 11). An approach
to mapping the functional requirements and design parameters into code is described.
The application of axiomatic design to software development was first presented at
the 1991 CIRP General Assembly (Kim et al., 1991), and the system design concepts
were presented in the 1997 CIRP General Assembly (Suh, 1997).
This section presents a new software design methodology based on axiomatic de-
sign theory that incorporates object-oriented programming. This methodology over-
comes the shortcomings of various software design strategies discussed in Chapter
2—extensive software development and debugging times and the need for exten-
sive maintenance. It is not heuristic in nature and provides basic principles for good
software systems. The axiomatic design framework for software overcomes many
shortcomings of current software design techniques: high maintenance costs, lim-
ited reusability, low reliability, the need for extensive debugging and testing, poor
documentation, and limited extensibility of the software, in addition to the high de-
velopment cost of software. The methodology presented in this section has helped
software engineers to improve productivity and reliability.
In this section, we will start by reviewing the basic principles of axiomatic design as
applied to hardware product development. It explains why software DFSS belts should
apply this methodology, and then we proceed to discuss how it applies to software
DFSS. In the context of DFSS, the topic of axiomatic design was discussed extensively
by El-Haik (2005), El-Haik and Roy (2005), and El-Haik and Mekki (2008).
13.2
AXIOMATIC DESIGN IN PRODUCT DFSS: AN INTRODUCTION
Axiomatic design is a prescriptive engineering
1
design method. Systematic research
in engineering design began in Germany during the 1850s. The recent contributions
in the field of engineering design include axiomatic design (Suh, 1984, 1990, 1995,
1996, 1997, 2001), product design and development (Ulrich & Eppinger, 1995), the
mechanical design process (Ulman, 1992), Pugh's total design (Pugh, 1991, 1996),
and TRIZ (Altshuller, 1988, 1990), Rantanen, 1988, and Arciszewsky, 1988. These
contributions demonstrate that research in engineering design is an active field that
1
Prescriptive design describes how a design should be processed. Axiomatic design is an example of
prescriptive design methodologies. Descriptive design methods like design for assembly are descriptive of
the best practices and are algorithmic in nature.
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