Incorporating concurrent engineering and design economics in a decision support system

Concurrent engineering is a philosophy for improving design communication and aiding the process of recognizing and resolving design conflicts. Design economics is an integrated part of the concurrent engineering process, since cost-effective product design is at the root of many design conflicts. However, the bulk of research on concurrent engineering focuses on deriving better methods for coordinating both product and process designs with respect to functionality and manufacturability issues. The issue of implementing design economics via the concurrent engineering process at the conceptual design stage has not been adequately addressed.

This research explores the development of a structural framework for incorporating concurrent engineering and design economics into a prototype decision support system that supports the conceptual phase of the product design process. The dissertation has three major tasks: (1) To formulate a concurrent engineering framework for use during the conceptual design stage, (2) To develop an activity-based cost estimation model for estimating product cost at the conceptual level of product design, and (3) To integrate and demonstrate the concurrent engineering framework and the activity-based cost estimation model together in a prototype decision support system.

To accomplish the objective of this research, electronics manufacturing is used as an application setting. The design of printed circuit board assemblies is the domain for establishing a structural framework for incorporating concurrent engineering and activity-based cost estimation.