SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING & PHYSICAL SCIENCES

Design & Manufacture 3 B59DE1

An Overview of the Engineering Design Process

Design Flow

Design is the process by which the needs of the customer or the marketplace are
transformed into a product satisfying these needs. Design essentially is an exercise in
problem solving. Typically, the design of a new product consists of the following stages:

The development of a new product may also require the development of a prototype to prove
that new technologies work before committing resources to full-scale manufacture.

The traditional view of the design to manufacture process is that it is a sequential process,
the outcome of one stage is passed on to the next stage. This tends to lead to iteration in the
design, i.e. having to go back to an earlier stage to correct mistakes. This can make products
more expensive and delivered to the marketplace late. A better approach is for the designer
to consider the stages following design to try and eliminate any potential problems. This
means that the designer requires help from the other experts in the company for example the
manufacturing expert to help ensure that any designs the designer comes up with can be
made.

So what factors might a designer have to consider in order to eliminate iteration?

• Manufacture - Can the product be made with our facilities?

• Sales - Are we producing a product that the customer wants?
• Purchasing - Are the parts specified in stock, or do why have to order them?
• Cost - Is the design going to cost too much to make?
• Transport - Is the product the right size for the method of transporting?
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 • Disposal - How will the product be disposed at the end of its life?

Design Brief

The design brief is typically a statement of intent. I.e. "We will design and make a Formula
One racing car". Although it states the problem, it isn't enough information with which to start
designing.

Product Design Specification (PDS)

This is possibly the most important stage of the design process and yet one of the least
understood stage. It is important that before you produce a 'solution' there is a true
understanding of the actual problem. The PDS is a document listing the problem in detail. It
is important to work with the customer and analyse the marketplace to produce a list of
requirements necessary to produce a successful product. The designer should constantly
refer back to this document to ensure designs are appropriate.

To produce the PDS it is likely that you will have to research the problem and analyse
competing products and all important points and discoveries should be included in your PDS.

Concept Design

Using the PDS as the basis, the designer attempts to produce an outline of a solution. A
conceptual design is a usually an outline of key components and their arrangement with the
details of the design left for a later stage. For example, a concept design for a car might
consist of a sketch showing a car with four wheels and the engine mounted at the front of the
car. The exact details of the components such as the diameter of the wheels or the size of
the engine are determined at the detail design stage. However, the degree of detail
generated at the conceptual design stage will vary depending on the product being
designed.

It is important when designing a product that you not only consider the product design
specification but you also consider the activities downstream of the design stage.
Downstream activities typically are manufacture, sales, transportation etc. By considering
these stages early, you can eliminate problems that may occur at these stages.

This stage of the design involves drawing up a number of different viable concept designs
which satisfy the requirements of the product outlined in the PDS and then evaluating them
to decide on the most suitable to develop further. Hence, concept design can be seen as a
two-stage process of concept generation and concept evaluation

Concept generation

Typically, designers capture their ideas by sketching them on paper. Annotation helps
identify key points so that their ideas can be communicated with other members of the
company.

There are a number of techniques available to the designer to aid the development of new
concepts. One of the most popular is brainstorming.

This technique involves generating ideas, typically in small groups, by saying any idea that
comes into your head no matter how silly it may seem. This usually sparks ideas from other
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team members. By the end of a brainstorming session there will be a list of ideas, most
useless, but some may have the potential to be developed into a concept. Brainstorming
works better if the members of the team have different areas of expertise.

Concept evaluation

Once a suitable number of concepts have been generated, it is necessary to choose the
design most suitable for to fulfil the requirements set out in the PDS. The product design
specification should be used as the basis of any decision being made. Ideally a multifunction
design team should perform this task so that each concept can be evaluated from a number
of angles or perspectives. The chosen concept will be developed in detail.

One useful technique for evaluating concepts to decide on which one is the best is to use a
technique called 'matrix evaluation'

With matrix evaluation a table is produced listing important the features required from a
product - usually this list is drawn up from the important features described in the product
design specification. The products are listed across the table. The first concept is the
benchmark concept. The quality of the other concepts are compared against the benchmark
concept for the required features, to help identify if the concept is better, worse than, or is the
same as the benchmark concept. The design with the most 'better than' is likely to be the
best concept to develop further.

Most people who use the matrix technique will assign points, rather than simple, better,
worse, same, so that it is easier to identify which concepts are the best. It is also likely that
some features of the design will be more important than others so a weighting is used.

Detail design

In this stage of the design process, the chosen concept design is designed in detailed with
all the dimensions and specifications necessary to make the design specified on a detailed
drawing of the design.

It may be necessary to produce prototypes to test ideas at this stage. The designer should
also work closely with manufacture to ensure that the product can be made.

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