Application of Math-Based Marketing and Financial Tools in an Automated Parametric Design Framework

A suite of math-based marketing and financial tools has been deployed and exercised within an automated, multidisciplinary parametric design framework. This suite of tools includes a market share estimator based on Cook’s S-Model, a Technical Cost Model for estimating the variable and fixed costs of the vehicle’s body system, a database of cost estimates for other vehicle systems, and a profit estimator developed from a standard accounting template. Development of the S-Model market share estimator included completion of a Demand-Price analysis for the midsize sedan segment and collection of publicly available value curves predominantly covering the powertrain performance and interior roominess disciplines. A flexible input-output interface was developed for the Technical Cost Model to provide a means of propagating changes in body design parameters throughout the framework. A series of exercises including analysis of a baseline vehicle, optimization of a hypothetical vehicle concept for net income, and a hypothetical architectural parameter study were conducted to demonstrate the capabilities of a multidisciplinary parametric design framework enabled with marketing and financial tools. These exercises demonstrate that existing engineering and business discipline tools can effectively interoperate to design for profitability in a multidisciplinary parametric design environment. They also illustrate several key challenges in automated design for profitability, such as those encountered in defining the role of price as a design variable in a tightly coupled design-for-profit system and in generating cost estimates using a continuously variable design representation.