Decision Making and Concept

Selection
Chapter 7

1
Concept Generation & Selection

2
Requirements for Selecting a Design
1) A set of design selection criteria

2) A set of alternatives believed to satisfy the set of criteria

3) A means to evaluate the design alternatives with respect

to each criterion

3
Evaluate & Select Concept Stage in PDP

4
Concept Generation and Evaluation

5
Shot Buddy Concept Generation

Adapted from J. Davis, J. Decker, J. Maresco, S. McBee, S. Phillips, and R. Quinn, “JSR Design
Final Report: Shot-Buddy,” unpublished, ENME 472, University of Maryland, May 2010.
6
Design Selection Based on Absolute
Criteria
 Evaluation based on judgment of functional feasibility of
the design
 Concepts should be placed into one of the followings:
 Feasible
 Not Feasible
 Will Work

 Evaluation based on assessment of technology readiness

 Product design is not the appropriate place to do R&D.

 Evaluation based on go/no-go screening of the constraints

and threshold levels of engineering characteristics
7
 Pugh Chart

8
Pugh Chart
 A particularly useful method for identifying the most
promising design concepts among the alternatives
generated at is the Pugh chart.
 Pugh’s method compares each concept relative to a
reference or datum concept and for each criterion
determines whether the concept in question is better
than, poorer than, or about the same as the reference
concept.
 Pugh Chart is a relative comparison technique.

9
Steps of Building the Pugh Chart
1) Choose the criteria by which the concepts will be
evaluated
2) Formulate the decision matrix
3) Clarify the design concepts
4) Choose the datum concept
5) Complete the matrix entries
6) Evaluate the ratings
7) Establish a new datum and rerun the matrix
8) Examine the selected concept for improvement
opportunities

10
Pugh Chart 1 for Shot-Buddy Example

11
Pugh Chart 2 for Shot-Buddy Example

12
 Weighted Decision Matrix

13
Weighted Decision Matrix
 A decision matrix is a method of evaluating competing
concepts by ranking the design criteria with weighting
factors and scoring the degree to which each design
concept meets the criterion.

 To do this it is necessary to convert the values obtained

for different design criteria into a consistent set of values.

 The simplest way of dealing with design criteria

expressed in a variety of ways is to use a point scale.

14
Evaluation Scheme for Design
Alternatives or Objectives

15
Systematic Methods for Determining
Weighted Factors
 Direct Assignment:
 This method is only recommended for design teams where
there are many years of experience designing the same
product line.
 Objective Tree:
 This method relies on some experience with the
importance of the criteria in the design process.

16
Objective Tree: Design of a Crane Hook

17
Weighted Decision Matrix:
Steel Crane Hook

The best solution is the riveted plate design option.

18
 Pugh Chart 2 for Shot-Buddy Example

19
Delaney Bales et al., Sports For Nathan, Final Report, Mech. Eng., California Polytechnic State University , Senior Design Project
 Pugh Chart from Student’s project

Delaney Bales et al., Sports For Nathan, Final Report, Mech. Eng., California Polytechnic State University , Senior Design Project

20 Dieter/Schmidt, Engineering Design 5e.

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