Note on Combinatorial Engineering Frameworks for Hierarchical Modular Systems

TL;DR

This paper outlines combinatorial engineering frameworks for designing, evaluating, and improving hierarchical modular systems, integrating various combinatorial problems to support system life cycle management.

Contribution

It introduces a set of standard combinatorial engineering frameworks specifically tailored for hierarchical modular systems, linking multiple combinatorial problems within a unified approach.

Findings

Frameworks support system design and evaluation stages

Integration of multiple combinatorial problems enhances system analysis

Frameworks applicable to system maintenance and evolution

Abstract

The paper briefly describes a basic set of special combinatorial engineering frameworks for solving complex problems in the field of hierarchical modular systems. The frameworks consist of combinatorial problems (and corresponding models), which are interconnected/linked (e.g., by preference relation). Mainly, hierarchical morphological system model is used. The list of basic standard combinatorial engineering (technological) frameworks is the following: (1) design of system hierarchical model, (2) combinatorial synthesis ('bottom-up' process for system design), (3) system evaluation, (4) detection of system bottlenecks, (5) system improvement (re-design, upgrade), (6) multi-stage design (design of system trajectory), (7) combinatorial modeling of system evolution/development and system forecasting. The combinatorial engineering frameworks are targeted to maintenance of some system life cycle stages. The list of main underlaying combinatorial optimization problems involves the following: knapsack problem, multiple-choice problem, assignment problem, spanning trees, morphological clique problem.