A Framework for Incorporating Time, Cost, and Fidelity Trade-offs among Design Assessment Methods in Product Development

Product development performance is of great importance in the current competitive market. Engineers and managers have a wide array of design tools at their disposal to assess alternative designs and determine their fitness. The selection of assessment methods can have a significant impact on project risk (the failure to meet lead time or budgetary constraints). A framework for evaluating such decisions and tradeoffs for development projects using Monte Carlo simulations and optimization is presented. Case study results show that alternative assessment methods can be used to achieve certain cost, lead time, or certainty goals.