The process of product development is one of the most important and complex activities of an industrial company, especially in the aerospace domain. The requirements of stakeholders play a central role here. Those requirements come from internal and external sources, and further in the process are translated into organizational knowledge (e.g. specifications, etc.). Utilization of this approved knowledge in new programs is very beneficial, and can save resources for design, may reduce the risk of failures, and may ease certification, manufacturing, maintenance and other processes.
The development of such complex systems is an extremely challenging process because of their growing complexity and frequently changing product environment and requirements. Furthermore, the development process affects the amount of information or knowledge (e.g. requirements) to be managed by an organization.
Building on information gained from past projects, this thesis proposes a method to structure the knowledge that was gained. The Environment-Based Design (EBD) methodology is a platform for characterization of this method. Utilizing the EBD tool, a Recursive Object Model (ROM), enables a graphical representation of the knowledge for ontology (components and relationships) that is found within the environment-based analysis. In addition, an example of analysis for the top-level requirement based EBD methodology is provided. This example proposes an opportunity for searching specific requirements by tagging with key words. The results were compared with a model approach based on the Arcadia method, and was found to be effective.