ECOR1044: Mechatronics

Project Design and Economics

ECOR1044: Design and Economics

Introduction to Design, Design Philosophies,

Design Process, Weighted Trade Study
 Overview
• What is Design?

• Design Centres and Philosophies

• Design Requirements/Specifications

• Design Cycle

• Design Economics

• Weighted Trade Study Example

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Introduction: Design and Design Philosophies
 What is Design?

• A plan or drawing to show the look, function and/or workings of a

building, system, or other object before it is made.

• Think for a minute, what is a well-designed product you know of?

• What is a ‘good’ design?

– People value different things in designs, for example, it’s inexpensive,
efficient, aesthetically pleasing, among many other things

• What do you value? What does the customer value?

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 Design Centre/Philosophy: Bauhaus

• The Bauhaus, which translates to ‘school

of building’ was inaugurated six months
after the end of WW1 and encouraged
artists and designers to use their talents to
rebuild.

• Operational from 1919 to 1933 when it

was closed due to Nazi pressure as it had Fig. 1 Walter Gropius' Dessau Bauhaus building [1]
been deemed a centre of communist
intellectualism

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 Design Centre/Philosophy: Bauhaus

• The school encouraged people across

many fields to experiment across
disciplines, combining elements of fine
arts and design education

• The school focused on ‘the unity of art

and design’, combining architecture,
sculpture, and painting into one design
Fig. 2 Members of the Triadic Ballet [2]

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 Design Centre/Philosophy: Bauhaus
• The cabinetmaking workshop was one of
the most popular workshops at Bauhaus,
run by Marcel Breuer from 1924-1928.

• The studio often attempted to

dematerialize conventional forms such as
chairs to their minimal existence.

• Inspired by the extruded steel tubes of his

bicycle, Marcel Breuer experimented
with metal furniture, ultimately creating Fig. 3 Club Chair (Model B3) [3]
lightweight, mass-producible metal
chairs.
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 Design Centre/Philosophy: Skunkworks Projects
• ‘Skunk Works’, a pseudonym for Lockheed
Martin's Advanced Development Programs, was
created in June 1943.

• Is responsible for several aircraft designs such as:

– The SR-71 Blackbird
– The F-22 Raptor
– The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II

• Created a philosophy for rapid innovation which Fig. 4 Skunk Works Logo [4]
companies copy to this day.

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 Design Centre/Ideology: Skunkworks Projects

• The term ‘skunkworks’ is generally used to describe an elite group

within an organization which:
– Has a high degree of autonomy,
– Is unhampered by bureaucracy
– Has a main task of working on advanced or secret projects, with a goal of
innovation

• This general approach has been adopted by other companies such as

Google and Boeing

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The Design Process
 Design Process
• The design process consists of many steps and sub-steps, in
engineering it is also an iterative process, meaning it will typically
loop back on itself. The steps we will look at are:
1. Research
2. Design Requirements
3. Feasibility
4. Conceptualization
5. Preliminary Design
6. Detailed Design
7. Integration and Testing
8. Production Planning
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 Design Process: Research
• Various stages of the design process, and even prior to design work,
typically involves a significant amount of time allotted to locating
information and research concerning the potential design.

• When researching, consideration should be given to existing

applicable literature, problems and successes associated with
existing solutions (though remember intellectual property may
introduce some limitations), costs, and the potential market for your
product.

• Be mindful of the source you are using, sources can include the
Internet, local libraries, government documents, organizational
documents, trade journals, and subject matter experts. 13
 Design Requirements
• This is one of the most important parts of the design process, if done
improperly the design is nearly guaranteed to be a failure.

• Establishing design requirements and conducting requirements

analysis, sometimes termed problem definition – effectively what
problem are you trying to solve, and how do you plan to solve it.

• This step essentially guides the design through the rest of the
process. At the end, the design is compared to these requirements to
ensure the design meets expected functionality.

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 Design Requirements
• Generally there are two sets of design requirements:
– 1) Requirements given to you by the customer; these are generally an
overview of the required functionality of the product you are designing
– 2) Internal requirements, this is where the company or engineer creates a set
of internal, more specific requirements for the design. These are typically
more specific and generally speak to the direct functionality of components.

• There are typically 3 types of statements in a requirements

document, they are:
– Shall (Requirement) – This must be implemented (and must be testable)
– Will (Fact) – This is will state a fact or declaration of purpose for the design
– Should (Goal) – These are non-mandatory, typically define something to
maximize or minimize
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 Design Requirements - Examples
• Shall:
– ‘The total mass of the vehicle shall not exceed 3100 kg.’
– Is this testable?

• Will:
– ‘The system will have the timing as defined in reference document ABC.’
– Reference documents could be internal documents of the organization,
standards documentation, or other things.

• Should:
– ‘The system shall not impede crew mobility’ (How do we test this?)
– ‘The system should not impede crew mobility’
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 Design Process: Feasibility
• Now we evaluate our design idea, performing a feasibility study and
analyzing the designs potential to determine whether the project can
proceed into the design phase.

• These studies are typically based on two criteria:

– The project must be based on an achievable idea (The project is
technologically feasible)
– The project needs to be within cost constraints (The project is economically
feasible)

• It is entirely possible to perform the study and realize the design is

not achievable due to several reasons.
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 Design Process: Conceptual Design

• A concept study is often a phase of project planning that includes

producing ideas and considering the pros and cons of implementing
those ideas.

• This stage of a project is done to minimize the likelihood of error,

manage costs, assess risks, and evaluate the potential success of the
intended project

• Things like weighted trade studies can typically be used as a

numerical method to evaluate each design idea.

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 Design Process: Conceptual Design
• Aerospace example: rough sketches of aircraft are created to give
context to conceptual ideas.

Fig. 5 Conceptual Design of an Aircraft [5]

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 Preliminary Design
• The overall system configuration is defined, and schematics,
diagrams, and layouts of the project may provide early project
configuration.

• During detailed design and optimization, the parameters of the part

being created will likely change, but the preliminary design focuses
on creating a baseline for the project to be built upon.

• The system may be broken down into subsystems which will be

responsible for various tasks. For example, for an aircraft
preliminary design may provide a rough idea of wing size and
location, engine size, control systems on-board, etc.
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 Detailed Design

• This phase further elaborates each aspect of the project/product by

complete description through solid modeling, drawings, circuit
schematics as well as specifications.

• Expands on the preliminary design, fleshing out the specifics of the

design such as: materials for hardware, specifications of
components, etc.

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 Detailed Design
• Computer-aided design (CAD) programs have made the detailed
design phase more efficient as they allow the ability to both draft
and simulate designs quickly, addressing most potential design
issues before arriving at a prototype.

Fig. 6 CAD Drawing of Mechanical Component [6]

Fig. 7 CAD Circuit Schematic [7] 22
 Verification and Validation Tetsting

• Once the detailed design is finished the design is implemented (in

hardware, software, etc.), and must go through another round of
evaluations (Verification and Validation).

• Verification checks that a product, service, or system meets a set of

design specifications.

• Validation is intended to ensure a product, service, or system meets

the operational needs of the user.

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 Production Planning

• Production planning (and tool design) consists of planning how to

mass-produce the design and which tools should be used in the
mass-production manufacturing process.

• This step involves selecting the production processes, determining

the sequence of operations, and the selection of tools, fixtures, metal
cutting and metal or plastics forming tools.

• This step also aims to ensure mass produced products meet

specifications during qualification testing.

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Design Process: Initial Design

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Design Process: Production Planning

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 Project Economics

• While designing our products as engineers we generally prioritize

the best technical solution, however there are other factors we must
account for. For example:

• Costs:
– Software
– Materials
– Upfront costs (tooling etc.)
– Operating costs (electricity, fuel, maintenance)

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 Project Economics

• Software:
– While at school you get to use a number of different software packages as
part of your degree. The licensing for this software can cost large sums of
money for companies.
– Software costs are typically recurring payments every year, depending on the
software it may be necessary starting at the conceptual or preliminary design
stages

• Materials:
– When the design is being manufactured the materials for manufacturing must
first be purchased, this costs occurs continually through production.

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 Project Economics

• Upfront:
– The upfront costs are typically investments in things like factory tooling, or
purchasing of required machinery. These typically occur at the outset of the
project, when the design is about to be manufactured.

• Operating:
– Operating costs are typically the costs associated with the manufacturing of
the design, such as electricity, fuel , factory maintenance, and the costs of
operating any product oversight.

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Weighted Trade Study Example
 Weighted Trade Study

• A Weighted Trade Study can be used to compare a number of

conceptual designs and determine which design fits your needs.

• Before the trade study can be performed you must first determine a
number of specifications required from the design. These will then
be used to evaluated the potential designs.

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 Weighted Trade Study
• Weighted trade study steps:
1. Assign weights to each design requirement (how important is each one, the
weight is a numerical value).
2. Each individual in the design group evaluates the designs on each
requirement giving it a score (For example 1-5, 5 being saying it meets the
requirement perfectly or exceeds it, 1 saying it does not fully meet the
requirement)
3. The groups scores are averaged so that a single score is given for each
requirement
4. The weight is multiplied by the average score resulting in a weighted score
for each requirement
5. These weighted scores are then summed for each design giving each design
a numerical value that represents how ‘good’ the design is

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 Weighted Trade Study

• Weighted trade study example: Purchasing a car

– What are our criteria for the car we’re looking to buy?

– A) The car shall cost less than $30,000

– B) Considerations:
• Cost
• Mileage
• Condition of interior (tears, broken plastic), or exterior (broken bumper, cracked
headlight)
• Paint Color

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 Weighted Trade Study
• 1) We start by assigning weights to each of our criteria, from 1-4,
and breaking each criteria into defined ranges:

– Cost (4 weighting)
• 1: $22500-$29,999, 2: $15000-$22499, 3: $7500-$14999, 4: $0-$7499

– Mileage (3 weighting)
• 1:150,000 km+, 2: 100,000 km – 150,000 km, 3: 50,000 – 99,999 km, 4: 0 – 49,999 km

– Condition (3 weighting)
• 1: Poor, 2: Mild, 3: Good, 4: Great

– Color (1 weighting)
• 1: Red, 2: Grey, 3: White, 4: Blue 34
 Weighted Trade Study

• 2) The choices for cars we have found are (Bracketed numbers

represent the score for that criteria):

Make/Model Cost ($) Mileage (km) Condition Color

Honda Civic $14,500 110,000 Good Grey
Subaru Impreza $18,000 78,000 Mild Blue

Make/Model Cost Mileage (km) Condition Color

Honda Civic 3 2 3 2
Subaru Impreza 2 3 2 4

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 Weighted Trade Study

• 3/4) Multiply the weight of each criteria by the score from the last
slide to get the weighted score:

Make/Model Cost (4) Mileage (3) Condition (3) Color (1)

Honda Civic 3 2 3 2
Subaru Impreza 2 3 2 4

Make/Model Cost Mileage Condition Color Total Score

Honda Civic 12 6 9 2 29
Subaru Impreza 8 9 6 4 27

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 References
[1] M. Solly, “Five Events to Watch For as Germany Celebrates 100 Years of the Bauhaus Movement,” Smithsonian.com, 17-Jan-2019.
[Online]. Available: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/five-events-watch-germany-celebrates-100-years-bauhaus-180971261/.
[Accessed: 22-Mar-2020].

[2] A. Quito, “The Bauhaus: The design utopia we're still living in,” Quartz, 02-May-2019. [Online]. Available:
https://qz.com/quartzy/1609729/what-is-bauhaus-design-a-historical-primer/. [Accessed: 22-Mar-2020].

[3] “Bauhaus Movement Overview,” The Art Story. [Online]. Available: https://www.theartstory.org/movement/bauhaus/. [Accessed: 22-Mar-
2020].

[4] “Skunk Works® Origin Story,” Lockheed Martin. [Online]. Available: https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/who-we-are/business-
areas/aeronautics/skunkworks/skunk-works-origin-story.html. [Accessed: 22-Mar-2020].

[5] Admin, “The Three Stages of Aircraft Design,” Monroe Aerospace News, 22-May-2019. [Online]. Available:
https://monroeaerospace.com/blog/the-three-stages-of-aircraft-design/. [Accessed: 22-Mar-2020].

[6] L. Brynes, Should 3D CAD Engineers Learn Drafting. [Online]. Available: http://www.tecnetinc.com/Should the 3D CAD engineer learn
drafting.html. [Accessed: 22-Mar-2020].

[7] R. Dinesh, S. Bansal, C. Bhargava, N. Rathour, and R. Gupta, “A Low-Density Power and Delay Testing of PTL and Gate Using 0.09µm
Technology,” 2018 International Conference on Intelligent Circuits and Systems (ICICS), 2018.

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Questions?