Dependency and its predictions for systems and its components

This study builds up the case for dependency considerations in system analyses by explaining “dependency” as a concept, and proposes a methodology to predict the dependency for the components and the systems. Many a times, dependency concept is neglected in system studies in order to simplify the analysis that leads to the “satisficing” results. For systems where such negligence may cause significant deviations, the dependency has to be accounted for. The proposed methodology applies the concepts of analytic hierarchy process (AHP), directed graph, and matrices at different stages of analyses and results into an intra‐dependency index for the system. This index could help the analyst select the less dependent system from amongst the choices available without compromising on the minimum expectations of the system. The index would also help understand the level of the dependencies in the system. In this paper, the methodology is developed and described using examples, to explain the application of functional dependency and design dependency. This suggests the wide coverage and application of the proposed methodology.