An Integrated Design Process for Manufacturing and Multidisciplinary Design Under System Uncertainty

Necessity to address engineering system uncertainties in design processes has long been acknowledged. To obtain quality of product, a safety factor is traditionally used by many design engineers due to its easy of use and comprehension. However, the safety factor approach often yields conservative designs, since it ignores the type of probability distribution and the mechanism of uncertainty propagation from the input to the output. For a consistent reliability-based design, two fundamental issues must be investigated thoroughly. First, the design-decision process that clearly identifies a level of confidence under system uncertainties needs to be developed, which must be an efficient and accurate process. The second is to develop the design process that not only yields a high quality design but also a cost-effective optimum design from manufacturing point of view