Ship Design Process Modeling: Capturing a Highly Complex Process
Year: 2011
Editor: Eppinger, S. D., Maurer, M., Eben, K., Lindemann, U.
Author: Cooper, S.; Allen, G.; Smith, R.; Billingsley, D.; Helgerson, D.
Section: Applications of DSM Methodology
Page(s): 393-406
Abstract
At the 10th DSM Conference, a team of ship designers working to document the naval ship design process was introduced to DSM methods. The design of a naval surface combatant ship is an extreme example of complexity management. DSM was applied to attempt to capture of expertise from the technical community, through a series of workshops. A custom-built, integrated database approach was planned to document the results. Progress was reported at the 11th DSM Conference. Subsequently our team discovered COTS software (Plexus) that not only served the database function and provided multiple views of process data, but also provided a dynamic modeling/viewing user interface that proved more intuitive to ship design practitioners. This paper describes our progress, including the workshop process, framing principles (semantic rules and conventions) that proved helpful, our use of Plexus, the model we have created, and our intended applications for that model.
Keywords: Ship design, Navy, Plexus, COTS, DSM, knowledge capture