Affordable Design: a Methodology to Implement Process-based Manufacturing Cost Models into the Traditional Performance-focused Multidisciplinary Design Optimization

The primary objective of this paper is to demonstrate the use of process-based manufacturing and assembly cost models in a traditional performancefocused multidisciplinary design and optimization process. The use of automated cost-performance analysis is an enabling technology that could bring realistic process-based manufacturing and assembly cost into multidisciplinary design and optimization. In this paper, we present a new methodology for incorporating process costing into a standard multidisciplinary design optimization process. Material, manufacturing processes, and assembly processes costs then could be used as the objective function for the optimization method. A case study involving forty-six different configurations of a simple wing is presented, indicating that a design based on performance criteria alone may not necessarily be the most affordable as far as manufacturing and assembly cost is concerned.