DESIGN SUPPORT SYSTEMS FOR PROCESS ENGINEERING .3. DESIGN RATIONALE AS A REQUIREMENT FOR EFFECTIVE SUPPORT

An explicit record of design rationale is an important requirement for effective design support. Such a record may be defined as the informa tion supporting or explaining the decisions made by a designer when ge nerating an artifact. Design rationale can be used to (a) improve the documentation of the design process, (b) verify the design methodology and the resulting design artifact, (c) provide support for the analys is and explanation of the design process, and (d) enhance the re-usabi lity of parts of the design artifact. This paper describes an extensio n to KBDS, a prototype design support system for conceptual design of chemical processes. The extension makes use of an IBIS representation to record the design rationale and integrates it with the design histo ry maintained by KBDS. Thus, KBDS-IBIS records in an integrated and pr escriptive form the specification of the design artifact, the history of its evolution during the design process, and the designer's rationa le. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd