Improvement/Extension of Modular Systems as Combinatorial Reengineering (Survey)

TL;DR

This survey reviews approaches for improving and extending modular systems through combinatorial optimization techniques, covering component enhancements, compatibility, structural modifications, and evaluation methods with practical examples.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of combinatorial reengineering strategies for modular systems, including new heuristics and evaluation scales.

Findings

Multiple strategies for system improvement are outlined.

Heuristics are effectively applied to complex optimization problems.

Numerical examples illustrate the proposed approaches.

Abstract

The paper describes development (improvement/extension) approaches for composite (modular) systems (as combinatorial reengineering). The following system improvement/extension actions are considered: (a) improvement of systems component(s) (e.g., improvement of a system component, replacement of a system component); (b) improvement of system component interconnection (compatibility); (c) joint improvement improvement of system components(s) and their interconnection; (d) improvement of system structure (replacement of system part(s), addition of a system part, deletion of a system part, modification of system structure). The study of system improvement approaches involve some crucial issues: (i) scales for evaluation of system components and component compatibility (quantitative scale, ordinal scale, poset-like scale, scale based on interval multiset estimate), (ii) evaluation of integrated system quality, (iii) integration methods to obtain the integrated system quality. The system improvement/extension strategies can be examined as seleciton/combination of the improvement action(s) above and as modification of system structure. The strategies are based on combinatorial optimization problems (e.g., multicriteria selection, knapsack problem, multiple choice problem, combinatorial synthesis based on morphological clique problem, assignment/reassignment problem, graph recoloring problem, spanning problems, hotlink assignment). Here, heuristics are used. Various system improvement/extension strategies are presented including illustrative numerical examples.