Design Process Robustness

Research Theme: Process Management

Product Robust Design is traditionally concerned with selecting design variables to minimise the impact of uncontrollable noise factors (which typically arise from the manufacturing process or from environmental variation in use) upon product performance.

This project explores the analogous concept of Process Robust Design - the organisation of design processes to mitigate the impact of uncertainty in task execution upon project performance.

 

Objectives

  • Understand the relationship between sources of uncertainty and variability in design process performance.
  • Identify the determinants of robustness in design processes.
  • Explore how design process robustness could be improved using low-fidelity models.

Method

The Applied Signposting Model is used to represent the structure of activities, information flows and iterations in complex design processes. Discrete-event simulation is used to evaluate the effects of uncontrollable noise factors and other uncertainties in project execution upon the performance and variability of the design project.

This modelling and simulation approach is used to investigate 1) the robustness of a 225-task model derived from case studies in the aerospace industry; and 2) hypothetical models to explore general factors which influence process robustness and the contexts in which these factors are important.

 

Acknowledgements

Support for this research is provided by the EPSRC and the Cambridge University Engineering Department.

Selected Publications

  • CHALUPNIK, M.J., WYNN, D.C., ECKERT, C.M. and CLARKSON, P.J. (tbc) 'Approaches to mitigate the impact of uncertainty in development processes' Submitted to ICED'09.
  • CHALUPNIK, M.J., WYNN, D.C., ECKERT, C.M. and CLARKSON, P.J. (2008) 'Analysing the relationship between design process composition and robustness to task delays' in International Design Conference (Design 2008), Dubrovnik, Croatia.
  • CHALUPNIK, M.J., WYNN, D.C., ECKERT, C.M. and CLARKSON, P.J. (2008) 'Investigating design process performance under uncertainty' in 8th International Symposium on Tools and Methods of Competitive Engineering (TMCE 2008), Izmir, Turkey.
  • CHALUPNIK, M.J., WYNN, D.C., ECKERT, C.M. and CLARKSON, P.J. (2007) 'Understanding design process robustness: a modelling approach' in 16th International Conference on Engineering Design (ICED'07), Paris, France.