Abstract: The “decomposition-synthesis” paradigm is adopted for the development of complex products such as satellites, radar and aircraft, so as to reduce the complexity of development. However, the data dependencies between the design activities are sophisticated due to the interdependent subsystems or components, which brings about frequent iterations and interactions to the development process. Firstly, development activities, calculations and specifications are defined on the basis of the decomposition of the complex product system. Then multi-level design structure matrix (MDSM) used to analyze the dependencies between the development activities is put forward and the process logic of the development process is automatically established on the basis of the analysis of multi-level design structure matrix. In the end, a multi-level, modular and integrated workflow is set up, which is driven by message and data template consisting of information of product, constrains and management.

Key words: Development process, Multi-level design structure matrix (MDSM), Process logic, Workflow