Module partition for complex products based on stable overlapping community detection and overlapping component allocation

Abstract

The rationality of product module partition is crucial to the success of modular design. The correlations between components of complex products are complex, increasing the difficulty of module partition. Thus, many existing methods of module partition have difficulty realizing this process effectively for complex products with a large number of components. This paper proposes a module partition method for complex products based on stable overlapping community detection and overlapping component allocation. The correlations between components are analyzed to obtain a comprehensive correlation strength matrix. The undirected weighted network is used to represent components and the correlations between them. A stable overlapping community detection algorithm based on the improved judgement of within-community Shapley values is proposed to generate multiple preliminary schemes of module partition. Overlapping components among modules are allocated to the most suitable modules by adopting a genetic algorithm (GA). The scheme with the largest modularity measure Q is selected as the final scheme of module partition. The proposed method is applied to a computer numerical control (CNC) grinding machine. The proposed module partition method for complex products is demonstrated to be superior to other effective methods.