Integration of Information From Design and Manufacture Through Decision Support Problems

Effectively addressing life-cycle considerations early in the design process and a reduction in design cycle time are key issues in concurrent engineering. They require making good design decisions in the face of uncertainty, ambiguity and incomplete information. In this paper an overview of our research concerning the integration of material selection and manufacturing considerations with dimensional synthesis of a component is presented. The integration is achieved by formulating appropriate Decision Support Problems and using multiobjective optimization for solution in order to provide decision support. Our approach facilitates concurrent handling of a number of issues associated with designing for manufacture and enables a reduction in the number of iterations in the process of designing. This has been shown through case studies dealing with the design of structures made of composite materials.