An automated documentation system for a large scale manufacturing engineering research project
Authors: Howard M. Bloom, Carl E. Wenger
Venue: Proceedings of the 2nd annual international conference on Systems documentation (1983)

The Automated Manufacturing Research Facility (AMRF) being implemented at the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) involves the development of a software system integrating the various information processing, communications and data storage functions required in a totally automated manufacturing environment. The project contains a five year software development effort by more than thirty research staff organizationally partitioned into many units working concurrently on different parts of the system and supplemented by software acquired through procurement or contractual effort. As the facility is implemented in modular blocks, new software development will be undertaken as research into factory automation technology continues. The Automated Manufacturing Research Facility (AMRF) being implemented at the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) involves the development of a software system integrating the various information processing, communications and data storage functions required in a totally automated manufacturing environment. The project contains a five year software development effort by more than thirty research staff organizationally partitioned into many units working concurrently on different parts of the system and supplemented by software acquired through procurement or contractual effort. As the facility is implemented in modular blocks, new software development will be undertaken as research into factory automation technology continues. In such a research environment, a system is needed for maintaining documentation for the software life cycle for the following purposes: (1) tracking progress of individual module development, (2) allowing for the availability of up-to-date information on module description to other members of the project who need to interface to a given module, (3) developing a cross reference of module and data element relationships, (4) providing a documentation format that includes specific reporting requirements to upper level management, and (5) generating working level documentation that can be easily modified and serve as an up-to-date reference for anyone with interest in the project or special subproject. This paper describes the structure of a software system that is functioning in a research environment and satisfies the following design constraints: (I) provide minimum additional effort on the part of the system developers, and (2) reflect the structured thinking of the developer during the software life cycle. The key to such a management system is the early documentation of the system modules identified through a decomposition of all functions from the integrated system down to the lowest level subroutines. Each component module of the system has a group of seven documents to track it through the life cycle. The decomposition provides each developer with an understanding of where his module fits into the overall system and permits module documentation to be produced that can be limited to just a few pages. The documenter is encouraged to enter information as it becomes known so that the system always reflects the latest status of the research effort. The automated system is being developed as an on-line interactive menu-driven system that allows the developer to enter information about his modules. The final system version will be capable of the following functions: (1) full-screen editing, (2) menu driven interface between the user and the system, (3) cross referencing between module and data elements, (4) generation of reports, (5) generation of work schedules, (6) monitoring of system milestones, (7) checking for appropriate information, and (8) managing a data element dictionary.