Engineering design is increasingly recognized as a decision-making process. This recognition brings with it the richness of many well-developed theories and methods from economics, operations research, decision sciences, and other disciplines. Done correctly, it forces the process of engineering design into a total systems context, and demands that design decisions account for a product’s total life cycle. It also provides a theory of design that is based on a rigorous set of axioms that underlie value theory. But the rigor of decision-based design also places stringent conditions on the process of engineering design that eliminate popular approaches such as Quality Function Deployment. This paper presents the underlying notions of decision-based design, points to some of the axioms that underlie the theory of decision-based design, and discusses the consequences of the theory on engineering education.

Issue Section:
Research Papers
Topics:
Engineering design, Design, Cycles, Decision making, Economics , Engineering disciplines, Engineering education
1.
Akao, Y., ed., 1988, Quality Function Deployment: Integrating Customer Requirements into Product Design, Productivity Press, Portland, OR.
2.
Arrow, K. J., 1963, Social Choice and Individual Values, 2nd ed., Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.
3.
Bernoulli, D., 1738, Exposition of a New Theory on the Measurement of Risk, “Specimen Theoriae Novae de Mensura Sortis,” Commentarii Academiae Scientiarum Imperialis Petropolitanae, Tomus V. [See also, A. N. Page, Utility Theory: A Book of Readings, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., NY, 1968, pp. 199–214.]
4.
Boothroyd
G.
,
1987
, “
Design for Assembly—The Key to Design for Manufacture
,”
International Journal of Manufacturing Technology
, Vol.
2
, pp.
3
–
11
.
5.
Carroll, L., 1865, Alice in Wonderland.
6.
Clemen, R. T., 1991, Making Hard Decisions: An Introduction to Decision Analysis, PWS-Kent Publishing Company, Boston, MA.
7.
Deming, W. E., 1986, Out of the Crisis, MIT/CAES, Cambridge, MA.
8.
de Neufville, R., 1990, Applied Systems Analysis, McGraw-Hill, Inc., Singapore.
9.
Fishburn
P. C.
,
1968
,
Utility Theory, Management Science
, Vol.
14
, No.
5
, pp.
335
–
378
.
10.
Grayson, L. P., 1993, The Making of an Engineer, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., NY.
11.
Hauser, J. R., and Clausing, D., 1988, The House of Quality, Harvard Business Review, May, pp. 63–73.
12.
Hazelrigg. G. A., 1994, “Rethinking the Curriculum,” ASEE Prism, December, p. 56.
13.
Hazelrigg, G. A., 1996a, Systems Engineering: An Approach to Information-Based Design, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ.
14.
Hazelrigg
G. A.
,
1996
b,
The Implications of Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem on Approaches to Optimal Engineering Design
,
ASME Journal of Mechanical Design
, June, Vol.
118
, pp.
161
–
164
.
15.
Heal, G. M., 1973, The Theory of Economic Planning, American Elsevier Publishing Co., Inc., NY.
16.
Hildebrandt, S., and Tromba, A., 1985, Mathematics and Optimal Form, W. H. Freeman and Co., NY.
17.
Keeny
R. L.
,
1973
, “
A Decision Analysis with Multiplicative Objectives: The Mexico City Airport
,”
Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science
, Vol.
4
, pp.
101
–
117
.
18.
Keeny
R. L.
,
1974
, “
Multiplicative Utility Functions
,”
Operations Research
, Vol.
1
, pp.
23
–
25
.
19.
Luce, R. D., and Raiffa, H., 1957, Games and Decisions, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., NY.
20.
Marshall, K. T., and Oliver, R. M., 1995, Decision Making and Forecasting, McGraw-Hill, Inc., NY.
21.
Sage, A. P., 1977, Methodology for Large-Scale Systems, McGraw-Hill Book Company, NY.
22.
Suh, N. P., 1990, The Principles of Design, Oxford University Press, New York, NY.
23.
Taguchi, G., 1993, On Robust Technology Development, ASME Press, NY.
24.
Tribus, M., 1969, Rational Descriptions, Decisions and Designs, Pergamon Press, Elmsford, NY.
25.
von Neumann, J., and Morgenstern, O., 1953, The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, Third Edition, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
26.
Wasserman
G. S.
,
1993
, “
On How to Prioritize Design Requirements During the QFD Planning Phase
,”
IEE Transactions
, Vol.
25
, No.
3
, May, pp.
59
–
65
.
This content is only available via PDF.
Copyright © 1998
 by The American Society of Mechanical Engineers
You do not currently have access to this content.