Guidelines for Application of the Constituent Roadmap of Product Design Based on Axiomatic Design

Abstract

The ‘Constituent Roadmap of Product Design’ (CRPD) is a framework that is applied to track the designers’ knowledge of a product design as it progresses during development. The Constituent Roadmap of Product Design was introduced in late 2015 and relies heavily on Axiomatic Design; it uses Axioms 1 and 2 to model understanding of the product- and manufacturing-design by the designer. A central theme when applying the Constituent Roadmap is a procedure of regularly updating the ‘Check Matrix’. The Check Matrix is a table that continuously monitors the designer's knowledge position. Correct application of the check matrix is bound to a number of behavioural characteristics that need to be taken into consideration, e.g.: (i) in a decomposed system, it is not possible that a knowledge score at a certain hierarchical level exceeds that of one of its sublevels. A lack of knowledge is, similar to information in design, the sum of its subordinate knowledge deficits. (ii) on the other hand, the score in the check matrix indeed may exceed that of its lower levels during the process of zigzagging, as zigzagging is a process that advances top-down through the hierarchy of the product design.This paper explains how to apply the check matrix under various circumstances without violating the hierarchical dependencies of good practice in design.