One of the most active areas of engineering design today is a modular design method to design and to produce a large variety of product in a limited time and a lower cost. Decomposition of system into modules is the most important part of the modular design method. Design Structure Matrix (DSM) has been proposed for efficient modularization. However, DSM does not indicate the design flow. It is well known that a good design flow can be defined by axiomatic design. In this paper, a rational method is presented to define modules considering relationships between functional requirements and design parameters and interactions of design parameters within. The Independence Axiom of Axiomatic design and Design Structure Matrix (DSM) are utilized for efficient modularization of a design system and the design flow without feedbacks. The method is applied to the ceiling type air conditioner and the results are analyzed.
Analysis technology is widely accepted and quite popular these days. Incorporation of the analysis result into design process is a key factor for the success of the analysis area. A few design software products have been commercialized. Generally, they are trying to make an interface between various design methods and analysis software. Optimization is a representative design method. The products are investigated and compared for the aspects of user convenience and algorithm performance. A few popular products are selected. Graphic user interface (GU) is compared for the function and efficiency. The performances of the optimization algorithms are tested by mathematical and engineering examples. The results are discussed.