Level of Readiness Index for Conceptual Design Refinement

¹ The University of Tokyo, Environmental Science Research Center, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan
² The University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Engineering, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan

^* Corresponding author: kiino@esc.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Abstract

The authors have been teaching conceptual design courses to graduate schools and adult groups. Despite the instructors’ encouragement to refine a design to a level that clarifies the elemental functional requirement for each part element, the students often lump elemental functional requirements into higher level functions. The resulting Design Record Graph shows a functional requirement with multiple arcs extending to the corresponding nodes in the design parameter space. When such a design maps to a Design Matrix in Axiomatic Design, the matrix turns into a rectangular one with non-diagonal elements. Instead of just speaking to the students that they will face difficulty when it comes to producing prototypes, the authors developed a metric that quantifies the level of detail of a design so the students, often driven to gain higher numerical scores, will naturally spend efforts to refine their designs to levels that are ready for building prototypes. We call this metric Level of Readiness Index, i.e., LOR Index.