Abstract
The importance of flexible and optimal planning of engineering design process is increasingly recognized in today's competitive environment. Because a product consists of a lot of subsystems, an engineering design process consists of two different activities, i.e., an activity to enhance the technical performance level of each subsystem, and an activity to enhance the integrity among the subsystems. When considering the limitation of resources, there is a trade-off between the achievement probabilities of those activities. This paper proposes a new optimization method of design process planning that aims at a Pareto-optimal achievement of individual technical performances and total product integrity. A planning of design process is a complicated optimization problem including a number of various design variables and various evaluation indices. In order to solve this problem with a reasonable computation cost, this research separates the optimization problem into two sub problems, i.e., (i) defining of process architecture and organization structure and (ii) scheduling of resource allocation into activities. A growth curve model with a fuzzy number is used to evaluate the achievement probability of technical performance and its total integrity. This paper demonstrates its application to a student design project. A proposed optimization method facilitates a project manager to explore various process plans, to assess their risks, and decide a temporary plan.
