A Prestructuring Model for System Arrangement Problems

A computer supported procedure is presented for using requirement information to prestructure component relationships for a general class of arrangement problems. The procedure generalizes and extends the range of admissable requirement information and reduces the risk of local optimality in arrangement. Three categories of requirement information are identified: flow factors, explicit requirements and implicit requirements. These three are integrated and used to organize the components to be arranged into a "normative structure" in the form of a semi-lattice hierarchy. The normative structure is an approximation of the spatial or temporal arrangement to be generated in real space.