A Generic Formulaic Characterization of the Time to Reverse Engineer the Tolerances of a Product

Reverse engineering is the process of extracting information about a product from the product itself. An estimate of the barrier and time to extract information from any product is useful for the original designer and those reverse engineering, as both are affected by reverse engineering activities. The authors have previously presented a set of metrics and parameters to estimate the barrier and time for product reverse engineering. This work has laid the foundation for the developments of the current paper, which address the issue of tolerance extraction during reverse engineering. Under the developments presented herein, measurement and statistical analysis of the variation between multiple samples of a product are required to reverse engineer its tolerances. When reconstruction is the reason reverse engineering activities are carried out, this level of reverse engineering can be critical, as tolerances ensure that products function properly and consistently. In this paper, we introduce metrics that (i) characterize how the flow of information from a product during reverse engineering changes as additional product samples are evaluated, and (ii) estimate the total barrier and time to reverse engineer the tolerances of a product. Additionally, a simple example is introduced to illustrate how to use the newly developed metrics and to serve as empirical validation.Copyright © 2009 by ASME