Speaker: Tim Weilkiens
Venue: Hamburg (15. April 2013), Copenhagen (16. April 2013), Stockholm (17. April 2013)

Functions are the core of each product. However you can’t touch them like physical components and they are not in the focus of the engineers. The relationship between functions and physical components turns from a one to one to a many to many relationship that makes it more complex and important to keep an eye on it. Due to the lack of knowledge and focus on functions the development is often guided by technical constraints and we build products that do not cover the customers intended purpose and is filled with self-made complexity.

I present a light-weighted method to create a functional architecture for systems (FAS method) and show how to map it to a physical architecture. It is a Zigzag Pattern from requirements via a functional architecture to the physical architecture with a logical architecture as a potential stopover. The Zigzag Pattern clarifies the relationship between requirements and solution space. It’s knowledge helps to structure and evaluate the complex information of a product development.

More information:
The FAS method – http://www.fas-method.org
Zigzag pattern – http://model-based-systems-engineering.com/tag/zigzag/