THE VALIDATION OF A MODULAR COMMERCIAL PRODUCT ARCHITECTURE

This paper addresses the process used by one commercial company, Otis Elevator, to validate the architecture of a new flagship product. The existing commercial product architecture is loosely derived through a coupling of the functional domain, as envisioned by corporate and customer needs, and the physical domain, which evolves over time to keep up with innovation and changes in the marketplace. As new technology is investigated, and sometimes subsequently inserted, the occasion arises to more formally reassess the structure of the functional architecture, with a need to continually validate the evolving physical architecture in light of new technology. The goal of the current effort in architecture validation is to create a modular architecture with standardize