6.3 Suspended Ceiling Design Process - Bilkent University

parameter relationships. However, once an initial model was
produced, it constituted the base for further development.
2. The interviews were just as important as reading design documents,
because all the knowledge was not well captured by design
documents. A large amount of it existed in the designers’ heads.
Interviews seem to be a good means to extract this knowledge.
3. A confusion about the “really-followed” and “should-be followed”
processes occurred during the data collection. The respondents
sometimes tended to describe the process that they thought of as
an ideal one. In these cases, the author explained to the participants
that the aim of the study is to model the process as it occurred.
4. The author introduced both IDEF0 and DSM models to the
participants. The participants understood the IDEF0 notation easier
than that of DSM. This suggests that the DSM method may be
difficult to comprehend for the uninitiated.
6.4.4.3 The IDEF0 Models
Before building DSMs, the author produced IDEF0 models of the
suspended ceiling design process. While producing the diagrams, the
framework proposed in the U.S. NIST (National Institute of Standards)
IDEF0 Standard (U.S. NIST, 1993) was used. Microsoft Visio Professional
Edition was used as the graphical modeling tool. First, an A0 context
diagram was produced for suspended ceiling life cycle (Figures 6.5, 6.6
and 6.7), and then the model was detailed to reflect the design process
128