Initial situation analysis through problem graph

In current design processes supported by R&D department in companies, thorough analyses of all possible dimensions that are linked with the problem and the past experiences developed in the problem domain represents an important stage (sometimes called “problem definition” or “problem formulation”) often neglected by designers. This stage, mainly what we call the initial situation analysis (ISA) in this paper, is obviously located at the early stages of a project. Designers' expectations during this stage are to rapidly gather all the potential information useful to precisely describe the problem and to collect and synthesize known solutions from experiences prior to engaging the following design stages. The aim of this article is to develop a methodology for conducting an ISA stage, namely a problem graph. This methodology can be used to complete existing methods or to be added to classical design process as a first step. An example conducted in the metallurgy process area is used to illustrate the proposed methodology.