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Concept
Engineering design process
Summary
The engineering design process, also known as the engineering method, is a common series of steps that engineers use in creating functional products and processes. The process is highly iterative - parts of the process often need to be repeated many times before another can be entered - though the part(s) that get iterated and the number of such cycles in any given project may vary.
It is a decision making process (often iterative) in which the basic sciences, mathematics, and engineering sciences are applied to convert resources optimally to meet a stated objective. Among the fundamental elements of the design process are the establishment of objectives and criteria, synthesis, analysis, construction, testing and evaluation.
It's important to understand that there are various framings/articulations of the engineering design process. Different terminology employed may have varying degrees of overlap, which affects what steps get stated explicitly or deemed "high level" versus subordinate in any given model. This, of course, applies as much to any particular example steps/sequences given here.
One example framing of the engineering design process delineates the following stages: research, conceptualization, feasibility assessment, establishing design requirements, preliminary design, detailed design, production planning and tool design, and production. Others, noting that "different authors (in both research literature and in textbooks) define different phases of the design process with varying activities occurring within them," have suggested more simplified/generalized models - such as problem definition, conceptual design, preliminary design, detailed design, and design communication. Another summary of the process, from European engineering design literature, includes clarification of the task, conceptual design, embodiment design, detail design. (NOTE: In these examples, other key aspects - such as concept evaluation and prototyping - are subsets and/or extensions of one or more of the listed steps.
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