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Approaches to Improve Engineering Design (2001) / Chapter Skim
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5. Implications for Engineering Design Education and Research
Pages 39-42

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From page 39...
... Research to enhance existing theories or develop new ones that could be broadly applied is highly desirable, and the theories must be applicable in the real world, where design time and cost are as critical as product features. This increasing demand and limited supply of adequate tools warrants research to improve the process of making design decisions.
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From page 40...
... This type of state-of-the-art decision making that takes uncertainty and the cognitive response of decision makers into account could be a valuable part of engineering design, but no design process tool widely used today in engineering design is mathematically rigorous and universally applicable. Far greater productivity of design engineers will result from additional advances in computing capability to model, simulate, and visualize products; from the understanding of physical, chemical, and biological systems; and from robust decision analysis tools.
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From page 41...
... Interdisciplinary capstone courses that include legal, social, and economic issues, as well as team building skills, can be particularly useful teaching tools and should be included in this undertaking. Although the authors tried to reach a consensus—and all did generally support most of the recommendations some held dissenting views that they expressed as follows: .~ It is not wise to invest more money in developing theoretical foundations for decision making in design, firstly, because, as the report indicates, the developments to date are fragmented and not in any way unified.
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Key Terms

  • design tools
  • decision analysis
  • design decisions
  • design process
  • common practice

  • design processes
  • decision theory
  • elucidate operable
  • renders intuitive
  • economic issues

  • design time
  • customer acceptability
  • versus responses
  • capstone courses
  • liability associated

  • teaching tools
  • building skills
  • estimate sensitivities
  • evolutionary process
  • interdisciplinary capstone

  • entire complex
  • particularly useful
  • universally applicable
  • products requires
  • cognitive response

  • operable regions
  • constructive dialogue
  • computing capability
  • conceptual model
  • include legal


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