Enriching requirement-activities in design through french-US instruction comparison
Year: 2013
Editor: Udo Lindemann, Srinivasan V, Yong Se Kim, Sang Won Lee, John Clarkson, Gaetano Cascini
Author: Prudhomme, Guy; Pourroy, Franck; Summers, Joshua David
Series: ICED
Institution: 1: Clemson University, United States of America; 2: Grenoble-INP / UJF-Grenoble 1 / CNRS, G-SCOP UMR5272 Grenoble, F-38031, France
Page(s): 115-124
ISBN: 978-1-904670-51-3
ISSN: 2220-4334
Abstract
Engineering requirements are taught through different approaches in US and French universities. In the globalization of engineering product development, these different approaches can introduce semantic challenges among the engineers. If the academic institutions are to educate future engineers for this global environment, then it is the responsibility of the institutions to begin to develop a shared, global understanding of central engineering issues, such as requirements and associated activities. This paper seeks to begin to reconcile and enrich these approaches by examining the activities that are supported through the steps and tools of each approach. Through this, it is found that there are opportunities for improvement in each, such by introducing (1) a requirement spreadsheet to the Grenoble approach for detailing meta-information and (2) the interactors graph to the Clemson approach to help guide engineers in discovering interaction centric requirements. Several other extensions and integrations are suggested to begin to develop a richer global approach, but a deeper study remains to justify and implement this integration.
Keywords: Design education, requirements, design tool, AFNOR, function, co-evolution