High Performance and Robust Systems - HIPARSYS

Research Theme: Knowledge Management

Companies want to move from evolving design requirements to understanding customer requirements, from reactive design quality to predictive design quality by means of robust design and production planning.

The project's main focus is on powerful tools (logical, mathematical, statistical) that can be applied in this process.

Motivation

Variations in design characteristics (geometric and material) cause problems and failures , which in turn cause direct and indirect losses. If causes of these variations can be identified, corrective actions could be taken early in the design process.

Objectives

  • To develop software tools that can efficiently support reasoning about designcharacteristics that are critical to the design's quality.

Method

Existing good practice in developing and implementing tools to support Design for X will be followed. The tools will

  • make use of the data and data flows that already exist in companies;
  • be suitable for use in a collaborative setting;
  • draw together implicit and explicit knowledge of specialists who are involved at different stages of a product life cycle;
  • be easy to use and learn on a job;
  • be integrated with other tools that are used in a company to support the relevant activities.

    • Findings

    The project is at an early stage, the following tasks are being performed:

    1. evaluate literature on and existing tools for Design for X;
    2. evaluate how DRed (a tool for capturing design rationale) can be used to create the cause and effect diagrams in a collaborative setting during brain-storming sessions;
    3. extend the functionality of DRed to support close integration with MS Excel spreadsheets since MS Excel spreadsheets are widely used in industry to store, perform calculations on and plot numerical data.

    Details

    The context of the project is the Design for Process Excellence initiative that is being currently introduced at Rolls Royce.

    Acknowledgements

    Support for this project is provided by Rolls Royce and the DTI.

    Selected Publications

    • Bracewell, R.H. and Wallace, K.M. (2003) 'A tool for capturingdesign rationale' in ICED03, 14th International Conference on EngineeringDesign, Stockholm, Sweden, 185-186.
    • Bracewell, R.H. (2003) 'A method and tool for increasing the efficiencyof a design process', UK, GB0319170.7, 15 August 2003 application filed.
    • Culley, S., Duffy, A., McMahon, C. and Wallace, K.M. (2001)'Design methods for performance and sustainability. Proceedings of the 13thinternational conference on engineering design ICED01', Professional EngineeringPublishing.