Modifying Pugh's Design Concept Evaluation Methods
Abstract
The conceptual design phase poses a large degree of uncertainty on how the final design will perform and how much the product will cost. When engineers select a design concept, they rely heavily on their own perceptions. Under these circumstances, engineers evaluate concepts by comparing them to others (pairwise comparison), by using perceptual ratings, or by quantifying their beliefs about uncertainties. Pugh's concept evaluation methods, the concept comparison and evaluation matrix, and the rating/weighting method are popular perception-based methods. This paper discusses potential pitfalls of Pugh's methods and proposes modifications that use a perceptual rating to reference the target values or degrees of belief about uncertainties. Among these modifications, the preliminary comparative study suggests that evaluating concepts by probability of satisfying targets and performing the sensitivity analysis to test for the robustness of the evaluation seem to be the most promising approach. Hypothetical and illustrative examples serve in comparative study of these methods.
Recommended Citation
S. Takai and K. Ishii, "Modifying Pugh's Design Concept Evaluation Methods," Proceedings of 2004 ASME Design Engineering Technical Conferences, American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), Jan 2004.
Department(s)
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Keywords and Phrases
Concept Comparison and Evaluation Matrix; Concept Evaluation; Pugh's Method; Rating/Weighting Method
Document Type
Article - Conference proceedings
Document Version
Citation
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2004 American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), All rights reserved.
Publication Date
01 Jan 2004
