Multi-Objective Single Product Robust Optimization: An Integrated Design and Marketing Approach

We present an integrated design and marketing approach to facilitate the generation of an optimal robust set of product design alternatives to carry forward to the prototyping stage. The approach considers variability in both (i) engineering design domain, and (ii) customer preferences in marketing domain. In the design domain, the approach evaluates performance and robustness of a design alternative due to variations in its uncontrollable parameters. In the marketing domain, in addition to considering competitive product offerings, the approach considers designs that are robust in customer preferences with respect to: (1) the variations in the design domain, and (2) the inherent variations in the estimates of preferences given the fit of the preference model to the sampled data. Our overall goal is to obtain design alternatives that are multi-objectively robust and optimal, i.e., (1) are optimal for nominal values of parameters, and (2) are within a known acceptable range in their multi-objective performance, and (3) maintain feasibility even when they are subject to applications and environments that are different from nominal or standard laboratory conditions. We illustrate the highlights of our approach with the design of a corded power tool example.