MODEL BASED SYSTEMS ENGINEERING APPROACH FOR COLLABORATIVE REQUIREMENTS IN COOLING WATER SYSTEM DESIGN

Abstract

Evaluation of the manufacturing process industry confirms that there is still manual exchange of product data between design and procurement engineers and equipment suppliers. Manual data exchange incurs human error, increases the cost, and takes more time. Also manual data exchange prevents designers from automatically evaluating a larger pool of suppliers and verifying supplier requirements. Even current PLM software faces difficulties with flow of requirements information from different suppliers. This thesis proposes to develop a collaborative requirements framework using a Model Based System Engineering approach to representing, communicating, and verifying requirements. Collaborative requirements entail that equipment data and process system requirements are shared in a common way to encourage automated of equipment tradeoff and requirement traceability. The collaborative requirement framework includes SysML to represent the multiple views of requirements and their relation to the system structure and behavior, Multilevel Flow Model functional diagrams to depict the high level qualitative functionality with relation to requirements, and lastly an optimization tool to verify requirements. Overall, this thesis shows the benefits of using the collaborative requirements framework automating data exchange between design engineers and equipment suppliers.