GUIDING LOCAL DESIGN DECISIONS towards A FLEXIBLE and CHANGEABLE PRODUCT ARCHITECTURE

Abstract

Flexibility and changeability are crucial when it comes to the design of embedded automotive architectures. However, flexibility and changeability are concepts rooted in the overall product and its objectives, while architectural design decisions may affect local subsystems as well as the overall system. Axiomatic design is applied to bridge this gap: The architecture is decomposed into its entities and changeability is described through the design's information content. Five domains of actions to foster changeability are identified and generic action schemes are derived.