Interface Information Management Tools for the Maritime and Oil and Gas Industry

When developing complex Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) component-based systems, it is important to manage the interfaces between components properly, so that the components can work together smoothly. In new building of ships or Mobile Offshore Units (MOUs), although the control systems become more and more complex and integrated, the interface information management practice is still dominated by using Excel, MS Word, or Pdf files. This paper presents a study to formalize the management of the interfaces, to design and implement two example tools, by IBM and Genus respectively, to manage interface specification and communication in COTS component-based development. The contributions of the study are two fold, first, based on interviews and meetings with different stakeholders in the industry, the study elaborates functional and non-functional requirements of interface management, second, the study illustrates how to combine an interface management tool with system engineering tools and processes to control and govern development, maintenance, and evolution of large COTS component-based systems.