Design process reengineering and planning based on modularization

Process modularization is one of the approaches to reengineer design process in order to improve the efficiency of product design and shorten design cycle. This paper, firstly, proposes a model of design process unit (DPU), which is the minimum design activity unit with three attributes, namely state, resource and constraint. Then, a general description of DPU is illustrated and, according to their attributes, similarity degrees between these DPUs are calculated with cosine function method. By similarity matrix and modularization idea, those DPUs with the same or similar attributes can be reengineered into one module, hence they can be executed concurrently during design process. Finally, an example is presented to validate the feasibility of the method.