An enterprise based decision support system for engineering aggregate selection: a case study

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework that would help manufacturers to select the design concept that provides optimal solutions to the entire value chain involving multiple functional teams such as product design, development, planning, sourcing, service and marketing. The selection of an optimal design concept is based on the highest value index of a design concept. This is derived from quality function deployment (QFD) and a functional analysis system using customer requirement, quality deployment, development and design constraint as inputs. The framework systematically considers different alternatives to converge at an optimal solution. Design/methodology/approach All high-level product requirements from customer and market analysis are translated into different engineering parameters using QFD. Thereafter, the functional analysis system technique (FAST) is employed to determine the range of functions and identify components that would achieve different functionalities. The relative importance of each function is determined by functional cost analyses, enabling us to generate different design concepts. Thereafter, business parameters are extracted from the business objective of each functional area. These business parameters are compared with different design concepts using the analytical hierarchical process (AHP), thus evolving the enterprise value index (EVI) for each design concept. Findings The design concepts are evaluated with different business parameters using the AHP methodology to form EVI. The design concept 2 with highest enterprise EVI (4.549) is selected for further development. To validate the consistency of the business parameters, the consistency ratio (CR) has been calculated using Saaty’s Eigenvector method. The value of CR is 8.4 per cent, which indicates that the judgment made in this paper as far as populating the business parameters weight matrix is concerned is quite reasonable. This framework would enable an enterprise’s dealing in the area of complex engineering systems/aggregates to choose the design concept that would maximize the value of the enterprise. Originality/value This research develops an integrated methodology for design concept selection from an enterprise point of view. Major functional agencies and their respective attributes are considered for the development of the framework and subsequent selection. An enterprise’s mission and vision framework function as the primary input for the extraction of related attributes of the functional agency.