Understanding design-manufacture interaction using compromise decision support problems—I. A formulation for composite pressure vessels

The decision support problem (DSP) technique is being developed to facilitate the concurrent implementation of design, manufacture and maintenance. This involves the development of a domain-independent method (and the associated software) that can be used to process domain-dependent information and thereby provide support for human judgment. Modeling and gaining an understanding of the interaction between design and manufacture is an important step in this development. We found that there was a need for a test problem to study and understand various issues associated with the interaction between design and manufacture. In this paper, we introduce a conceptual model of a process for design (particularized for composite material components) that includes two principal phases, namely, that of ‘designing for concept’ and ‘designing for manufacture’. We report on the formulation of a comprehensive ‘non-textbook’ problem for modeling and understanding the issues involved in preliminary synthesis and then extend this problem to help understand the interaction between design and manufacture. The problem is formulated as a compromise DSP template and subsequently solved. The template for preliminary synthesis of composite pressure vessels and our observations are reported in part II of this paper and the lessons learned with regard to the interaction between design and manufacture through exercising the template are reported in part III. The focus in all three papers is on the method and understanding the subsequent ramifications—and not on the designs which are obtained by solving the templates.