A procedure based on robust design to orient towards reduction of information content

To manage the design matrix is an apparently easy thing to do. Discovering incongruences and converging at least towards a decoupled structure could suggest to designers that they have reached a sufficiently good starting point for the product under development. This is not sufficient. To be able to evaluate the information content of that solution is on the contrary an almost difficult activity because many relations between Functional Requirements and Design Parameters may not be completely defined deterministically. Eliminating bias and reducing variance remain the objective to be pursued. The paper discusses a procedure based on the Taguchi method to orient designers when verifying the influence that each design parameter has on the functional requirements. After the association of an Objective Function with one functional requirement or with a macro-functional requirement, the relation between the Objective Function and a set of design parameters can be identified from the Design Matrix. This can allow the designer to discern the best range of each parameter, analysing the Mean Value of the Objective Function and Signal to Noise Ratio. In the case of a conjoint influence of many design parameters on the functional requirement, it is important to verify the mutual interaction among the design parameters and evaluate the kind and level of interaction. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.