A formalism for designing with modules

The modular design of products leads to a large number of different products by creating distinct combinations of modules and components. This can give each product distinctive functionality, features, and performance levels. The design of modular products is of considerable importance in enabling companies to respond rapidly to changes in the market environment from the perspectives of Concurrent Engineering. This paper is concerned with the area of designing with modules, which involves selecting the module combination to best satisfy the given set of requirements. The aim of this paper is to develop a formalism for designing with modules, to meet customer requirements, using modules that come from suppliers that may be geographically separated and on differing computer platforms. The proposed designing with modules formalism is described and the approach is illustrated with an example involving the design of personal computers using the World Wide Web as a implementation environment. The main contribution of this paper is the development of a formal approach to remote designing with modules.