Towards a Conceptual Framework for Requirements Interoperability in Complex Systems Engineering

Abstract

Abstract. Requirements Engineering (RE) is an important activity in system engineering and produces, from the users' needs, specifications related to what the final system must be. This process in complex systems engineering is extremely intense, because there is a large number of stakeholders involved, with expertise deriving from heterogeneous domains. Moreover, requirements' improvements and variations are common during system life cycle phases. Thus, there is a risk of inconsistency of requirements during the engineering of a system. This paper provides a contribution in requirements engineering as it explores requirements interoperability in complex systems when multiples dimensions are involved. It discusses requirement management according to the cross-domains dimension, the cross-systems life cycle dimension, the crossrequirements dimension and the risk of inconsistency when three dimensions are involved simultaneously during the life cycle phases. The main result is an overview of the existing gaps in one and/or more dimensions allowing a discussion on the possibilities to cope with the problem of requirements inconsistency in multiples dimensions.

Semantic interoperability for an integrated product development process: a systematic literature review

“…This systematic review included the period of 2005-2015 based on the preliminary study results (Szejka et al, 2015 andSzejka et al, 2014), which indicated that the incidence of articles related to the research subject was more frequent from the second half of the 2000s. The systematic review was conducted according to the following steps:…”

“…Different PDP players do not use the same taxonomy Chan, 2009, Wang andZhang, 2008) and each one builds its own view with specific information about the Product Design and Manufacturing (Penciuc et al, 2014). Thus, requirements' misinterpretation and mistakes have been identified during the product design and manufacturing phases owing to the heterogeneity information (Canciglieri and Young, 2003;Canciglieri and Young, 2010;Chungoora et al, 2013;Szejka, et al, 2014;Liao et al, 2015;Imran and Young, 2016;Palmer et al, 2017).…”

A Discussion on Current Issues for Semantic Interoperability in an Integrated Product Development Process

“…This heterogeneity in information may result in divergence and misinterpretation of the correct meaning of information, due to lack of formalism and standards, affecting negatively in further product life-cycle management, by increasing costs, re-work and the overall lead time of PDP [12][17]. One of the reasons for divergence and misinterpretation resides in the expertise of specialist being restricted to their respective domains, as pointed by [18]. In addition, requirements coming from clients and software, across multiple domains, have their own structure, which results in a semantic problem that challenges the success of development process [18].…”

Proposal of a Model-Driven Ontology for Product Development Process Interoperability and Information Sharing

“…Thus, the current PDP's approaches of information exchange have been based on the product master models, as detailed in [1] and [2]. These approaches have a strict information structure, but mistakes and misinterpretation issues have been identified across different PDP phases [3], [4]. This occurs because PDP has a set of transdisciplinary activities and multiple viewpoints that generate semantic obstacles without interoperability.…”