Understanding design-manufacture interaction using compromise decision support problems—III. Design for manufacture of 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. A conceptual model of a process for design (for composite material pressure vessels) and the formulation and solution of a “non-textbook” compromise DSP template for the preliminary synthesis of composite pressure vessels is reported in parts II and III, of this paper respectively. This work provides the foundation on which the current work, namely, the development and implementation of a template to help understand the interaction between design and manufacture, is based. A parametric study to demonstrate the utility of the template to a designer is also included. The focus in this paper is on the method and on understanding the subsequent ramifications; the focus is not on the designs which are obtained by solving the template.