Type:

Year:

Editor:

Author:

Sangwan, Raghvinder; Srnivasan, Satish; Neill, Colin; Ergin, Nil

Series:

Institution:

Section:

Page(s):

DOI number:

ISBN:

Abstract:

Dependency structure models, or their equivalent dependency network models, can be analyzed for identifying critical components of a product architecture – elements within the architecture that, if changed, can have a significant impact on the rest of the system. In this paper we propose a discrete-time Markov chain-based algorithm to analyze dependency structure models of several product architectures to not only identify but also rank such components in order of their criticality. Identifying and ranking these elements allows prudent allocation of resources on a project to mitigate any risks that result from changes made to an architecture as a product evolves. The results show that the proposed algorithm is more effective when compared to other algorithms, namely betweenness centrality, closeness centrality and eigenvalue centrality, that have been used on dependency network models to identify and rank critical components.

Keywords:

Dependency Structure Model (DSM), Product Architecture, Component Ranking, Discrete-Time Markov Chain, Betweenness Centrality, Closeness Centrality, Eigenvalue Centrality