Function Decomposition

Based on our problem statement and what we plan to do at LaFarm, we believe any system we create would likely need to serve several functions that don’t necessarily relate to one another. Functions such as collecting water for use in irrigation, collecting water for the wash pack station, and recycling water from the wash pack station to use in irrigation. Since these functions may not rely on one another it felt more effective to complete a function decomposition for each individually, rather than trying to encompass them into a single function decomposition which would likely become complex and confusing. For our first function decomposition, we decided to focus on what we felt was the most important of the potential functions, collecting water for use in the wash pack station, which was converted into the verb-noun-modifier format to collect water safely.

Figure 1. Functional decomposition for the function, Collect Water Safely

Collect Water Safely

We need our solution to collect rainwater for the wash pack station while meeting EPA regulations for sanitization as noted in the constraints specifications. For this function, we identified three inputs and four outputs.

We needed to also identify the subfunctions required in order for our solution to turn the inputs into the outputs. For this particular function, we identified six subfunctions.

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