Engineering Design: A Project-Based Introduction, Fourth Edition

CHAPTER 14

DESIGN FOR PRODUCTION, USE, AND SUSTAINABILITY

What other factors influence the design process?

A CENTRAL theme of this book is that engineering design is usually done by teams. Design teams usually include not only engineers, but also manufacturing experts (who may be industrial engineers), marketing and sales professionals, reliability experts, cost accountants, lawyers, and so on. Such teams are concerned with understanding and optimizing the product under development for its entire life, including its design, development, manufacturing, marketing, distribution, use, and, eventually, disposal. Concern with all of these areas, coupled with the need to reduce the time to bring a product to market, has led to what is known as concurrent engineering. Concurrent engineering means that a multidisciplinary design team works simultaneously and in parallel to design a product, a manufacturing approach, a distribution scheme, user support, maintenance, and ultimately disposal. While it is beyond the scope of this book to explore concurrent engineering in depth, it is important that engineers understand and appreciate these related fields that influence both the initial design and the full life cycle of a product.

Engineers have always sought to realize various desirable attributes to some degree in their designs, embodied in the design process as objectives. This is often ...