Design structure matrix : models, applications and data exchange format

Abstract

The Design Structure Matrix model has facilitated the study of design structure and architectural complexity of complex systems by analyzing dependencies between system’s elements. There exists examples and applications of different DSM types highlighting real world engineered systems in the literature provided by the researchers and authors. Unfortunately, there does not exist any specialized digital format that can make those DSM examples data accessible to public for further analysis. Having said this, in this thesis, we propose a Data Exchange file format suitable for Design Structure Matrix (DSM) models. The DSM Data Exchange (DSMDE) file format can be considered as a common file format that supports DSM data to be exchanged in an organized manner. Thus, we (more) formally propose an extension to an existing “appropriate” exchange file format instead of creating a new one. We choose “Matrix Market (MM) file format” for extension to store DSM information. As DSM techniques are playing a vital role to model and analyze complex network in the area of product development, we believe that our DSMDE file format will contribute to establish a common standard of exchanging DSM data to the researchers and developers.