Robustness of Inventive Design Solutions - Transferring the Robust Design Focus from Production Process to Development Process

Conventional Robust Design methodologies consider deviations of product parameters during production and use. While it is acknowledged to integrate Robust Design methodologies as early as possible into the product development, most approaches neglect the systematic consideration of uncertainty due to the development process itself. This leads to a major drawback for inventive design solutions, especially within highly standardized and rapid development processes like car development. The proposed solution overcomes the major obstacles for the application of Robust Design in early design stages by identifying all relevant types of uncertainty. Furthermore, methods for the evaluation of robustness against uncertainty are shown. Finally, an optimization process is proposed and verified using an automotive example