ENME Webcast Archives
LEADERS IN MECHANICAL ENGINEERING LECTURE SERIES - SPRING 2008
Presenter Declined Webcast
Product Design and Decision Making
Lecturer: Deborah Thurston - University of Illinois
Original Air Date: Friday, May 2nd at 1:30pm
Abstract: Good design requires making difficult decisions. Tradeoffs must be made, often under uncertainty. In contrast to the high level of mathematical rigor that engineers traditionally employ to model physical systems, decision systems are too often ad hoc and arbitrary. This leads to suboptimal designs, or those that are not in the manufacturer's best interests. A decision based approach to engineering design and product development is presented. There are three elements, performed in an iterative manner. The first element is to expand the traditional scope of analysis to include issues such as manufacturing cost, operations, environmental impact, the business model, etc. The second element is to formulate a design optimization problem, articulating an objective function, decision variables and constraints. The third element is a systems analysis of the results of the first two elements. An illustrative overview of two projects is presented, including new product design and development for an air pollution control device, and design for sustainability through product take-back and reuse.
