Best Practice: Requirements Flow-down

As product complexity continues to increase, engineers face greater challenges in matching formulas and calculations to requirements. Mathcad provides the fundamental tools to build mathematical models, perform calculations, and ensure traceability – despite design changes. Mathcad gives engineering teams the confidence that their product decisions will meet and then exceed customer expectations. The processes of developing a new product or improving an existing product always begins with analyzing and documenting high level needs, then deriving solution requirements.

There are a variety of factors that cause conflict, or “noise,” in developing a new product. Mathcad plays an integral role in physical decomposition because the software:

• Allows engineers to easily and accurately handle the mathematics
• Uses familiar, natural math notation to enable easy evaluation by teams across geographical locations
• Establishes traceability of requirements decomposition, with both the product lifecycle management tools and design systems

Requirements flow-down is a best practice that helps engineers derive functional or physical requirements from system or market level requirements.

Mathcad’s open architecture allows for easy integration with PLM systems. Engineers can check Mathcad worksheets from either the Mathcad or PLM user interface. The impact of changes in requirements flow-down can be reflected in revised design drawings. Mathcad’s open architecture allows integration with applications and includes built-in integration with Microsoft Excel.

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