Toward a taxonomy of concept designs for improved robustness

The term 'robust design' denotes various engineering methods intended to make a product's function more consistent despite variations in the environment, manufacturing, deterioration, and customer use patterns. Most robust design methods are employed at the detailed design stage, but the benefits derived may be significantly higher if efforts are made earlier in the design process so that the design concept itself is inherently capable of being made robust. To make progress toward these ends, we studied a large number of inventions documented by US patents that claimed robustness as a key advantage over the prior art. We grouped these patents on the basis of the general strategies they employed. We found that the strategies can be usefully organized via the P-diagram. This paper will describe a few of these strategies by means of examples and explain the relationship of the strategies to the P-diagram.