Developing a Holistic Modeling Approach for Search-based System Architecting

Abstract This paper proposes a holistic modeling approach that combines the capabilities of Object Process Methodology (OPM), Colored Petri Net (CPN), and feature model. The resultant holistic model not only can capture the structural, behavioral, and dynamic aspects of a system, allowing simulation and strong analysis methods to be applied, it can also specify the architectural design space. This modeling approach is developed to facilitate the implementation of search-based system architecting where search algorithms are used to explore design trade space for good architecture alternatives. Such architecting approach integrates certain model construction, alternative generation, simulation, and assessment processes into a coherent and automated framework. Both the proposed holistic modeling approach and the search-based architecting framework are generic. They are targeted at systems that can be specified by conceptual models using object-oriented or process-oriented paradigms. The broad applicability of the proposed approach is demonstrated with the configuration of reconfigurable manufacturing systems (RMSs) under multi- objective optimization as an example. The test results showed that the proposed modeling approach could cover a huge number of architecture alternatives and supported the assessment of several performance measures. A set of quality results was obtained after running the optimization algorithm following the proposed search-based architecting framework.