Proceedings of ICAD2009 The Fifth International Conference on Axiomatic Design

The aim of this work is to present a methodology for optimising the costs of some industrial products that are coupled designs based on Axiomatic Design (AD). The proposed methodology consists in combining Response Sur-face Methodology (RSM) and Axiomatic Design as applied to both the engineering characteristics and cost functions of the products through a common set of explanatory design vari-ables. The response surfaces are generated during the develop-ment of the product’s prototype, and the methodology allows predicting the values for the design parameters of other pro-ducts of the same family, in order to fulfil the functional requirements at a prescribed cost. The paper includes a case study related to the development of rubbercork raw material