RESEARCH
A thorough literature search revealed that although there exists  a number of computational decision support means yet there is a lack of such means that guide designers during interdisciplinary product development on which solution commitments to take based on the stakeholder needs and which do not result in life-cycle issues.

There is thus a need for an approach framework for a computational means that:
i) maps life-oriented product structure specifications coming from the different disciplines (both engineering and non-engineering related) to the feasible solution space
ii) provides designers of interdisciplinary atefacts with pro-active guidance from the specifications, with reasons for the feasibility of the alternatives, so that at the embodiment stages they make the right decisions that do not result in problematic life-cycle consequences; and
iii) builds the related evolving models.

ii)    Undertaking a critical review of existing means that support decision making;

iii)   Identifying their strengths and weaknesses;

iv)   Establishing the missing gap from the review;

v)    Identifying a number of research questions that arise from the research gap;

vi) Establishing a phenomena model that acts as the backbone for the solution;

vii)  Generating a framework that aids designers in pro-active decision making;

viii) Establishing the knowledge model and formalizing the knowledge for realizing the approach;

ix) Identifying the system requirements and architecture for implementing the approach in a prototype system;

x)     Creating case-studies to be able to demonstrate the approach;

xi)    Demonstrating the approach to a number of practicing designers;

xii)   Obtaining designers’ feedback on the strengths and limitations of the approach;

xiii)  Identifying future improvements and spin-offs.

 

i)     Reviewing and understanding related literature;   

Complexity of products artefacts is increasing due to technological advances - that reflect customers’ ever increasing needs to produce, smaller, cheaper artefacts that are capable of performing multiple functions - and combination of different disciplines. Interdisciplinary artefacts need to satisfy a larger number of discipline criteria. The design reality is that there is
a lack of inferencing between the interdisciplinary specification document and the feasible solution space in a CAD system. Hence designers are not pro-actively guided about which alternatives are feasible and which result in good or problematic life-cycle consequences.
DESIGN PROBLEM BACKGROUND
RESEARCH PROBLEM
RESEARCH HYPOTHESIS
The hypothesis on which this PhD research proposal is based is that:

 Designers of interdisciplinary artefacts would benefit from an approach that allows the integration of interdisciplinary specifications in a CAD system, to be made aware of the feasible solution space and to foresee upcoming life-cycle issues prior to taking solution commitments, so as to be able to design artefacts that satisfy the life-phase stakeholder needs without too much iteration.
 
RESEARCH FOCUS
RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

In order to be able to focus, this research work is bounded to consider:

 - Component-based life-oriented design

 - Mechanical product design  

 - Design by a single designer

 - Routine and adaptive design