An integrated component design approach to the development of a design information system for customer-oriented product design

In product design, the designer must draw upon many different types of information including both product-user requirements and design developments in related fields. As each designer has his/her own subjective opinion, an appropriate link between the user requirements and design features must be carefully developed to generate the most suitable design recommendation.The objective of this research is to develop a component design approach for the generation and evaluation of feasible design alternatives to help designers make the most effective design decisions. The development of the approach is based on the concept of component design and interaction links between user requirements and design output parameter values so that the design alternatives can be generated. A confidence interval for order statistics is then used to determine if enough unique feasible design alternatives have been generated. The research is presented in conjunction with a ballpoint pen design to demonstrate the feasibility and advantages of this approach.The results should provide designers with a useful method for the development of a design information system that will efficiently generate and evaluate a set of feasible design alternatives in product design process.