Requirements Trade-off Considerations in Design Evolution
Abstract
The need to consider trade-offs in requirements to better satisfy what the user wants always confronts the engineering designers. They receive or capture the requirements based on various approaches and then consider all these requirements as individual objectives to design towards. Often, some of these objectives are brought together using an approach or another such as weighted sums, and then again, trade-off between these super objectives enables the designer to identify a solution or another to apply to their design. Often, this becomes a catalog design exercise, deciding what solution to select in order to achieve some performance objectives at some change in cost and possibly other criteria. In Industry, innovation drives this process as the customer is enticed by innovations that render what they are planning to buy more at the state of the art and the next best thing to have. Typically, the basic performance metrics of an artifact do not change significantly, but the innovative additions become a technology push that renders the artifact a must-have. Such a design evolution can be found in the design of vehicles. Aspects of performance or function in terms of the ability of the vehicle to take a person from one location to another are not even questioned by the buyers and are assumed to be met by any vehicle on the market. Nevertheless, hybrid and electric vehicles have somewhat changed the user requirements, though buyers may usually be interested in such a technology more for its impact on the environment than for the vehicle performance. The potential customers may focus on fuel consumption, safety, and convenience, but also, added safety features such as blind spot sensors (BLISS), connection to service centers, automated braking, or line departure warning availability.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Nov 18, 2021
- Accession Number
- AD1153592
Entities
People
- C. Kirschman
- D. Gorsich
- Georges Fadel
- N. Masoudi
Organizations
- United States Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center