Product Design Based on Concurrent Processing of Design and Manufacturing Information by Utility Analysis

Abstract

A methodology for concurrent decision making of factors concerning product designs and product manufacturing is proposed for ob taining better product designs from a wider global viewpoint of the product performance and the product manufacturing cost according to the concept of concurrent engineering In this method first a function expressing the satisfactory level of the manufacturing division and a function expressing the satisfactory level of the design division are formulated for the product design being regarded Then an integrated higher ranking decision making utility function is formulated using these two satisfactory level functions by the utility analysis Next Pareto optimum solution sets of the two multiobjective optimization problems of maximization of the product performance and minimization of the product manufacturing cost are obtained for alternative product designs Finally on the Pareto optimum solution curves the values of the integrated satisfactory levels are obtained and the most preferable design solution is selected An applied example of this concurrent design procedure is given to demonstrate its effectiveness in comparison to a conventional design procedure