An assessment of the IDEF notations as descriptive tools

摘要

The assessment technique to be presented in this paper (DMAT1) is being developed by the IMMS Group at Coventry Polytechnic. It is one side of a general method of selection of description methods, the other side of the problem being the specification of the target requirements for the description.The IDEF methods are part of an approach to the design of manufacturing facilities that is being developed by the U.S. Air Force. The overall methodology is called ICAM (Integrated Computer Aided Manufacture) and its specification techniques are the I(CAM) DEFinition methods. Each of these methods has its own suggested field of application: IDEF0 is used for functional models; IDEF1 is used for data models; IDEF2 is used for the simulation orientated models.The main body of the paper contains: 1.(i) a description of the assessment technique, DMAT1;2.(ii) a framework for evaluating assessment techniques;3.(iii) example applications of the descriptive tools (IDEF0, IDEF1, IDEF2), each being used to describe DMAT1;4.(iv) assessments for the descriptive tools (IDEF0, IDEF1, IDEF2) produced by DMAT1;5.(v) an evaluation of the assessment technique, DMAT1The paper shows that a feasible method of assessment has been devised. In showing the utility of the assessments the paper provides a useful picture of the strengths and weaknesses of the IDEF description tools.