Idea: An Integrated Method of Decision Making in Conceptual Design

ANNALS OF THE ORADEA UNIVERSITY. Fascicle of Management and Technological Engineering., 2012

This paper's aim is to support the product design process in education and proposes a general approach to product conceptual design phase in industrial engineering. A first review of design models and methods is done, then are highlighted several existing design problems seen from the industry and education perspective found in literature. The last part presents an approach that contributes to the mindset and understanding of the products' conceptual design phase in industrial engineering and that can be successfully applied in practice.

Proceeedings of Virtual Concept, 2006

A design methodology founded on the research work done at the Institute for Innovation and Design in Engineering, has been applied to enhance the ability to design and innovate of neophyte engineers at National Research and Technological Development Centre (CENIDET) in Mexico. This methodology is based on the cognitive skills of abstraction, critical parameter identification, and questioning in order to obtain a functionally efficient conceptual design. Besides of teaching the design process to novice designers, the methodology inspires in them a design philosophy which enables them to perform engineering effectively and innovatively in any area of specialty. Some examples of this design philosophy are presented.-However, by using a specific methodology, some times this idea of getting industrial expertise and industrial problems can be substituted for a solution of an everyday problem, based on the fact that not all the engineering problems come from industry, being this more accessible for students, nevertheless not less technically-challenging projects, and making these solutions of a real need a good starting point of their engineering design practice, some times those solutions have risen interest from industrial partners.

Design is a complex process that depends very much on the information about the design task to perform. At the early design stages, usually only conceptual sketches and schematics are available, often rough and incomplete. Still at the early stages of design the most important decisions have to be taken. This leads to an information contradiction: almost no information s available and yet most of the decisions have to be taken. Integral design is meant to overcome this problem of lacking information at the start of the design process by providing methods to communicate the consequences of design steps across the different disciplines involved in the design process. The Integral Design Methodology, based on the Methodical Design approach, is meant to support all disciplines in the design process with information about the tasks and the decisions of the other design disciplines involved in the design process. Supplying and exchanging explanations about the decisions taken during the d...

The paper presented here is part of a research project "Innovate, collaborative, integrated design of products" financed by CNCSIS. Its aim is to offer a better organization of the design process throughout the realization of a platform as common base for the projects in their first stages. In the first part of the paper there are presented general notions regarding the design process, models of design process and in the second part are presented some conceptual design methods retained for the use of realizing a conceptual platform: Functional Analysis, SADT, TIPS, FMEA, QFD.

IABSE Reports, 2014

This paper presents the results of an investigation conducted on a number of practicing structural engineers. The investigation was designed as a round-robin investigation were 16 engineers performed two early stage structural engineering tasks; the first a load take-down calculation for a five-storey concrete building, and the second the conceptual design of a 68 m span steel roof truss. The results revealed a large variability both in load effect calculation for the first task, and in truss steel weight for the second task. Moreover, the investigation as a whole indicated that both the development of conceptual understanding and the quality of conceptual design are negatively affected by the premature use of advanced analysis tools. It is proposed that more education resources, both in academia and in practice, should be invested in the development of conceptual design skills and basic principles of engineering.

International Journal of Intelligent Systems, 1995

In mechanical system design, the Integrated Computer Aided Design (ICAD) technology has evolved into a new generation of design techniques. It also paves the way for implementing Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) systems. However, the key issue to accomplish the objective in ICAD is the conceptual design automation. Conceptual design is a creative activity and an important decision making during overall product design to reduce energy consumption, to increase raw materials utilization, to obtain more profits, to reduce environmental effects of effluents, and to ensure flexibility, operability, controllability, and safety of manufacturing processes. Therefore, the quality of conceptual design determines the final quality of products and profit of plants. In this article, we first introduce the fundamentals and characteristics of conceptual design. Then, a general problem-solving strategy and methodology to implement conceptual design automation are proposed. An Integrated Distributed Intelligent Design Environment (IDIDE) for developing conceptual design expert systems is presented. Fundamental principles, system organization, and implementation techniques are discussed. Finally, an application case for wheel loader design is studied. 0 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

2005

The actual product ownership often remains with the manufacturer as functional (total care) products emerge in aerospace business agreements. The business risk is then transferred to the manufacturer why downstream knowledge needs to be available in the concept phase to consider all product life cycle aspects. The aim of this work is to study how a multidisciplinary design tool can be used to embed downstream processes for conceptual design and evaluation allowing simulation of life cycle properties. A knowledge enabled engineering approach was used to capture the engineering activities for design and evaluation of jet engine component flanges. For every design change, cost of manufacturing operations, maintenance and performance aspects can be directly assessed. The design tool assures that the engineering activities are performed accordingly to company design specification which creates a better control over the process quality. It also creates a better understanding enabling the engineers to optimize the concept in real time from an overall product life cycle view. The new tool will be the base for optimize the total product system and will be used not only between companies but also between product development departments in large global companies.

Guidelines for a Decision Support Method Adapted to NPD Processes, 2007

Selecting design concepts while exploring their solution space makes conceptual design a decision intensive process. Due to the complex nature of conceptual design, decisions taken by designer at the conceptual design stage play an important role in all subsequent phases of product life cycle, the user satisfaction of the product and the environment that the product is used and disposed of. Reviews of existing methodologies reveal that there is a need for designers to have a holistic understanding of and access to total context knowledge of the design problem under consideration to aid their decision making at the conceptual design stage. The design solution space could be explored effectively and an optimal solution could be generated if this knowledge is properly structured and available to use for the designers at the conceptual design stage. A new research approach addresses this problem by proposing, implementing and evaluating a computational framework for supporting decision ...

J. of Design Research, 2009

This paper presents a comparative study of the design processes of final-year industrial design students of 2 countries while conducting an individual design task. This task was identical for both groups making this comparison possible even though the studies are 15 years apart. This new study gave us opportunity to observe new aspects initially not focused upon. The operational aims of this study are the identification and comparison of the way senior design students in both groups take decisions, the relation with design moves along the process, and the factors influencing the decisions and moves.

2002

In the eartly phases of the design process the evaluation and the following decision-making are based on limited amountof information, nevertheless the decision will determine the direction of the ...