On Validating Design Decision Methodologies

In this paper an argument for validation of design decision methods is presented. In the process of justifying the need for validation, the elements of what a valid design methodology is are derived and a formal definition is presented. Under this definition, critical evaluation of two popular decision support methods, the House of Quality and Suh’s Axiomatic Design, is presented using a simple design problem and both are shown to be flawed under the proposed definition of validity. This does not imply that the methods are ineffective. In fact, under the appropriate assumptions, they are quite useful. However, in this paper, an investigation of the validity of these assumptions is conducted, including a more general definition of validity with respect to decision support methods in design.Copyright © 2003 by ASME

[1]  Farrokh Mistree,et al.  VALIDATING DESIGN METHODS & RESEARCH: THE VALIDATION SQUARE , 2000 .

[2]  Gordon Miller,et al.  Decision Making: Descriptive, Normative, and Prescriptive Interactions , 1990 .

[3]  G. Hazelrigg.  Systems Engineering: An Approach to Information-Based Design , 1996 .

[4]  D. E. Bell,et al.  Decision Making: DESCRIPTIVE, NORMATIVE, AND PRESCRIPTIVE INTERACTIONS IN DECISION MAKING , 1988 .

[5]  Christoph Roser.  A flexible design methodology , 2000 .

[6]  G. S. Alʹtshuller,et al.  The Innovation Algorithm:TRIZ, systematic innovation and technical creativity , 1999 .

[7]  Irwin Guttman,et al.  Introductory Engineering Statistics , 1965 .

[8]  Susan Carlson Skalak.  House of Quality , 2002 .

[9]  O. J. Dunn,et al.  Applied statistics: analysis of variance and regression , 1975 .

[10]  Farrokh Mistree,et al.  AN IMPLEMENTATION OF EXPECTED UTILITY THEORY IN DECISION BASED DESIGN , 1998 .

[11]  F. B. Vernadat,et al.  Decisions with Multiple Objectives: Preferences and Value Tradeoffs , 1994 .

[12]  J. Matheson,et al.  The Smart Organization: Creating Value Through Strategic R&D , 1997 .

[13]  Kemper Lewis,et al.  A Framework for Flexible Systems and Its Implementation in Multiattribute Decision Making , 2004 .

[14]  Farrokh Mistree,et al.  Metrics for Assessing Design Freedom and Information Certainty in the Early Stages of Design , 1998 .

[15]  George A. Hazelrigg,et al.  A Framework for Decision-Based Engineering Design , 1998 .

[16]  Stuart Pugh,et al.  Creating Innovative Products Using Total Design , 1996 .

[17]  Joseph R. Shoenfield,et al.  The Analytical Hierarchy , 1993 .

[18]  Virginia A. Clark,et al.  Applied Statistics: Analysis of Variance and Regression. , 1975 .

[19]  Achille Messac,et al.  Physical programming - Effective optimization for computational design , 1996 .

[20]  J. Hauser.  How Puritan-Bennett Used the House of Quality, , 2002 .

[21]  John Terninko,et al.  Step by Step Qfd: Customer Driven Product Design , 1997 .

[22]  Wei Chen,et al.  An approach to decision-based design. , 2001 .

[23]  Keijiro Masui,et al.  Quality Function Deployment for Environment (QFDE) to Support Design for Environment (DFE) , 2002 .

[24]  irwin Guttman,et al.  Introductory Engineering Statistics , 1965 .

[25]  Stephen R. Kimbleton.  The role of computer system models in performance evaluation , 1972, CACM.

[26]  Erik K. Antonsson,et al.  Aggregation functions for engineering design trade-offs , 1995, Fuzzy Sets Syst..

[27]  N. Suh.  Axiomatic Design of Mechanical Systems , 1995 .

[28]  D. E. Bell,et al.  Decision making: Descriptive, normative, and prescriptive interactions. , 1990 .