MARINE REQUIREMENTS ELUCIDATION AND THE NATURE OF PRELIMINARY SHIP DESIGN

2021 ◽  
Vol 153 (A1) ◽  
Author(s):  
D Andrews

In 2003 the author produced a paper, entitled “Marine Design – Requirements Elucidation rather than Requirements Engineering”, for the 8th International Marine Design Conference. This was intended to follow on from van Griethuysen’s 2000 IMDC paper “Marine Design – Can Systems Engineering Cope?”, while drawing on the author’s recent experience in, firstly, directing and then being the MoD Future Surface Combatant (FSC) IPT Team Leader in the concept phase for that programme, where the intentions of Smart Procurement were applied. Since leaving the MoD in 2000, the author’s academic endeavours, at UCL, have both refined the ideas in the 2003 paper and, through a diverse range of ship design studies, provided further substantial evidence in favour of that paper’s argument. The current paper was originally presented to the first Institution conference on systems engineering. This is a revised version in the light of the discussion at that conference on the applicability of systems engineering practice to initial ship design and presents the arguments of both papers to a wider audience. The current paper looks at the origins of the concept of Requirements Engineering, within systems engineering, when specifically applied to naval engineering acquisition practice. This is contrasted with consideration of the actual nature of the initial design of physically large and complex systems, typified by modern naval vessels. This is followed by drawing specific insights from a series of design studies undertaken by the UCL Design Research Centre, under the direction of the author. These diverse and wide ranging initial design studies can be seen as examples of the sophistication of Requirements Elucidation, exemplifying how systems engineering practice can be applied to the critical early stages of naval ship design. The paper concludes by looking at the characteristics of the initial or concept design process by seeing Requirements Elucidation, as the strategy to tackle the inherently “wicked problem” of determining what is really wanted of a naval vessel and what can be afforded.

Author(s):  
D.J Andrews

This paper is in many respects a continuation of the earlier paper by the author published in Proc. R. Soc. A in 1998 entitled ‘A comprehensive methodology for the design of ships (and other complex systems)’. The earlier paper described the approach to the initial design of ships developed by the author during some 35 years of design practice, including two previous secondments to teach ship design at UCL. The present paper not only takes that development forward, it also explains how the research tool demonstrating the author's approach to initial ship design has now been incorporated in an industry based design system to provide a working graphically and numerically integrated design system. This achievement is exemplified by a series of practical design investigations, undertaken by the UCL Design Research Centre led by the author, which were mainly undertaken for industry clients in order to investigate real problems to which the approach has brought significant insights. The other new strand in the present paper is the emphasis on the human factors or large scale ergonomics dimension, vital to complex and large scale design products but rarely hitherto been given sufficient prominence in the crucial formative stages of large scale design because of the inherent difficulties in doing so. The UCL Design Building Block approach has now been incorporated in the established PARAMARINE ship design system through a module entitled SURFCON. Work is now underway on an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council joint project with the University of Greenwich to interface the latter's escape simulation tool maritimeEXODUS with SURFCON to provide initial design guidance to ship designers on personnel movement. The paper's concluding section considers the wider applicability of the integration of simulation during initial design with the graphically driven synthesis to other complex and large scale design tasks. The paper concludes by suggesting how such an approach to complex design can contribute to the teaching of designers and, moreover, how this design approach can enable a creative qualitative approach to engineering design to be sustained despite the risk that advances in computer based methods might encourage emphasis being accorded to solely to quantitative analysis.


1999 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter J. Stafford ◽  
Kniceley Jr. ◽  
Monteith Roger L. ◽  
Kimbrell Gregory E. ◽  
Jones Thomas W. ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Peter R. Frise

Abstract The first year of most engineering programs: does not normally include much material in engineering practice or design, nor are professionalism, human factors or the concept of an engineering system solution to design problems emphasized. This lack of engineering content has been found to be a factor in the relatively high failure rate in the first year due to students not becoming interested in, and energized by, their studies. The author has developed a number of open-ended design problems which have been successful in teaching the engineering method to freshmen students while at the same time not over-taxing their relatively undeveloped engineering analysis skills. The projects are described and examples are available upon request from the author to allow interested readers to use them in their own programs. The other benefit of these projects has been in identifying students who have difficulty with written communications. Using the design project reports as a diagnostic tool we have been able to refer these students to assistance with their writing skills from the on-campus writing tutorial service.


Cloud computing services mature both economically and technologically and play a more and more extensive role in the domain of software and information systems engineering. SaaS offers advantage for both service providers and consumers. SaaS is faced with the question of appropriate techniques applying at early phase of Requirements engineering of producing system. The paper highlights two traditional methods namely i* and VORD belonging respectively to Goal oriented Requirements Engineering and Viewpoints approaches. The approach proposed try to dealing with the requirements elicitation in the context of Software-as-a-service SaaS. So, the approach benefits from strengths of both VORD and i* models and propose a combination of them in a new approach namely VORDi*.


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