The Integrated Function Modelling Framework and its Relation to Function Structures

Research and industrial practice have produced a host of function models and modelling approaches over the last decades. Each of these is meant to support designers in their design endeavours. Industrial practice is excessively diversified in terms of contextual requirements, aims and adopted processes; this automatically begs the question, which of the existing models should be selected for application in a specific situation. This paper sets out to contribute to this discourse. It strives to benchmark the fairly novel Integrated Function Modelling (IFM) framework against the well-established function structures modelling approach. The paper comparatively investigates the respective capabilities of the approaches, following the benchmarking protocol used earlier in relation to this Special Issue. Function structures are used as reference as they represent one of the most widespread function modelling approaches in research and practice. Both function structures and the IFM framework are exemplarily applied for modelling a glue gun. The gradual generation and refinement of the models is used to showcase their respective benefits and shortcomings. Eventually, the IFM framework is found to excel over function structures in terms of comprehensiveness and support for different types of function analyses. Finally, future research directions are proposed.