Analytical Target Setting: An Enterprise Context in Optimal Product Design

Engineering design decisions have more value and lasting impact if they are made in the context of the enterprise that produces the designed product. Setting targets that the designer must meet is often done at a high level within the enterprise, with inadequate consideration of the engineering design embodiment and associated cost. For complex artifacts produced by compartmentalized hierarchical enterprises, the challenge of linking the target setting rationale with the product instantiation is particularly demanding. The previously developed analytical target cascading process addresses the problem of translating supersystem design targets into design targets for all systems in a multilevel hierarchically structured product, so that local targets are consistent with each other and allow top targets to be met as closely as possible. In this article the process of rigorously setting the supersystem targets in an enterprise context is explored as a model-based approach termed “analytical target setting.” The effectiveness of linking analytical target setting and cascading is demonstrated in an automotive truck vehicle example.