Trade-offs Among System Architecture Modularity Criteria

Abstract

Modularity is a key design research area of the Nordic countries, with a history of intensive work over the last twenty years. In the last decade, there has been considerable research in product modularity, measuring the level of modularity and various procedures for searching for ideal modular architectures. Different manual heuristics and computer clustering algorithms have been developed to search ideal modular architectures by optimizing a modularity metric. However, the different criteria can be in conflict and improving one criteria may drive another infeasible, without an appropriate compromising effect or insights into decoupling conflicts / contradictions. We pose here the research ..