Visit the Decision Based Design Open Workshop web page at http://dbd.eng.buffalo.edu

DECISION-BASED DESIGN OPEN WORKSHOP
April 2002 Newsletter

Workshop Organizers

Wei Chen
Associate Professor
Mechanical Engineering
University of Illinois at Chicago
Chicago, IL

Linda Schmidt
Associate Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering
University of Maryland
University Park, MD

Kemper Lewis
Associate Professor
Dept of Mech & Aero Engineering
State University of New York at Buffalo
Buffalo, NY


In this Edition

Upcoming Events
Wrap-Up of 13th DBD Open Workshop
Summary of Question for Debate
New Question for Debate

Upcoming Events

14th Face-to-Face DBD Open Workshop Meeting

To be held at:

2002 ASME DETC Conferences
Sunday, September 29, 2002
Montreal, Canada

9AM - Noon

Description:
The Open Workshop on Decision-Based Design has been engaging industry and academic participants in a discussion on the nature of Decision-Based Design. Our biggest challenge has been the initiation of website visits and active engagement of visitors in our digital dialogue. Our biggest success has been the growth in our visitor base in both industry and academic circles and the continued interest we generate during our face-to-face Open Workshop Meetings. Our original grant established the Open Workshop and began the parallel engagement strategy of creating online dialogue and supporting it with face-to-face meetings. The Workshop's second phase of development from 1999 through 2001 was geared toward redesigning the Open Workshop to increase the breadth, number, and level of engagement of participants.

We now begin the third phase of the Open Workshop on Decision-Based Design: an evolution from online workshop to online colloquia. This parallels the evolution of the overall DBD discussion from introducing the concept to the broader engineering community to dissemination of consensus on both majority and minority views on DBD concepts. Phase 3 brings with it an emphasis on shifting the core format to a more formal presentation of ideas, more focused invitations for comment, and formally structuring and monitoring the feedback loop to the Workshop community. Our objectives for this third phase of the workshop include the following:


If you are interested in attending please register through ASME and let one of the organizers know that you are attending the workshop. The organizers can be contacted at:
Wei Chen
weichen1@uic.edu
(312) 996-6072

Linda Schmidt
lschmidt@eng.umd.edu
(301) 405-0417

Kemper Lewis
kelewis@eng.buffalo.edu
(716) 645-2593 x2232


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Wrap-Up of 13th DBD Open Workshop
Overview from the 13th Face-to-face DBD workshop held in San Juan, Puerto at the 2002 NSF Design, Service and Manufacturing Grantees and Research Conference, January 7th 2002, is available here with downloadable presentations.

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Summary of Question for Debate Responses
From July 2001 to March 2002, the DBD workshop home page posed a series of views on the applicability of game theory for decision making in engineering design. We received on average 95 responses to each of the four views posed. A summary of polls is provided as the following.

In summary, the overall consensus gained from this survey is that the game theory can be applied to decision making in engineering design. A larger percentage of respondents support the view that game theory is applicable for design situations that involve different companies compared to those supporting the view that it is applicable to any design situation whenever multiple designers are involved. The respondents expressed diverse views on whether engineering design should be profit-driven or should be performance and quality based.

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New Question for Debate
Topic:

Meeting Customers' Needs in Engineering Design

Pairs of Debating Views - choose your most preferred view from each group and briefly explain why.

Views:

Goal of Design

a. Meeting customer satisfaction is the primary goal of decision making. A product will eventually become profitable if it is of good quality and customers like it.

b. The primary goal of design decision making is not to meet customer satisfaction, instead it is to make profit. Costs associated with improving a quality feature that customers desire must be considered. Designers may decide not to improve a quality feature if it does not lead to profit.

c. Other view:

Capturing the preference of a group of customers

a. A group of customers' preferences can be captured by a value function that represents the aggregate preference as a function of multiple product attributes.

b. A group of customers' preferences cannot be aggregated and captured by a value function. Market share (or demand) is the most appropriate measure of how much a group of customers like the product.

c. Other view:

Meeting both the needs of producer and customers

a. Engineering design is a tradeoff between meeting the needs of customers and that of the producer. This tradeoff can be made through multiattribute utility analysis and modeling the customers' preference and the producer's preference by two separate utility measures.

b. The design utilty is solely determined based on the producer's preference in engineering design. There is no such "tradeoff" between the customers' preference in engineering producer's preference in the utility function. Customers' interests (or desires) are captured through other means such as the product demand.

c. Other view:

Submit your views

Visit the Decision Based Design Open Workshop web page at http://dbd.eng.buffalo.edu