A ROBUST CONCEPT EXPLORATION METHOD FOR ENHANCING PRODUCTIVITY IN CONCURRENT SYSTEMS-DESIGN

Productivity is of major economic significance in the current competit ive global market. Due to growing costs and globalization of the marke tplace, improvements in productivity require the creation of a reliabl e design through concurrent systems analysis in the shortest possible time. This is particularly important for designing complex engineering systems such as aircraft, automobiles and ships. The Robust Concept E xploration Method (RCEM) embodies a systematic approach that can be us ed to enhance design productivity by both increasing design knowledge in the early stages of designs and maintaining design freedom througho ut the design process. Given the overall design requirements and the s ystems analysis packages, the RCEM is used to evaluate quickly the des ign alternatives and to develop comprehensive, robust, flexible, and m odifiable iop-level specifications. Central to the RCEM is the integra tion of robust design techniques, Suh's design axioms, and the Respons e Surface Methodology within the framework of a mathematical construct , called the compromise Decision Support Problem, for multi-objective design problems. The high speed civil transport (hsct) aircraft is use d as an example to demonstrate our approach.