BA Techniques: Axiomatic Design

Written by Bharath Ravi | Jul 7, 2020 7:34:59 AM

Purpose

Axiomatic design is a system design methodology using matrix methods to systematically analyze the transformation of customer needs into functional requirements and design the parameters for business process. 

The method axiomatic design gets its name from its use of design principles governing the analysis and decision making process in developing the high quality product or system design. It is considered to be a design method that addresses the fundamental issues in the business processes. This methodology was developed by Dr. Sun Nam Pyo at MIT, department of mechanical engineering in 1990. It is a design technique with high added value because it reduces the number of possible initial designs to one. The axiomatic design provides a conceptual design that satisfies the business requirements. The axiomatic design methodology uses a top down research method. The customer input is collected and organized into business requirements. The ultimate goal of axiomatic design is to establish a design for the product and improve the design activities to achieve the business goals.

Axiomatic design is a framework built upon the two design axioms for good decision making during the mapping between what we want that is the business requirements and how we can achieve them that is the business goals. Axiomatic design is general methodology that helps the analysts to structure and understand the design problems, thereby facilitating the analysis of suitable design requirements, solutions, and processes. This approach also provides a consistent framework from which the metrics of design alternatives can be quantified. The axiomatic design process consists of the following steps,

  • Establish the design objectives to satisfy the customer requirements
  • Generate the ideas to create solutions
  • Analyze the solutions that satisfies the design objectives
  • Implement the selected design

Some of the articles related to Axiomatic design techniques are as follows,

The concept of domain is an important foundation in this technique. There are four main domains in axiomatic design. They are,

  • Customer Domain - It is characterized by the customer needs that can be explained as a simple list of the customer regarding to the business requirements of the system.
  • Functional Domain - The customer needs are specified in terms of functional requirements. It is transformed into a minimum set of independent requirements that completely characterize the functional needs.
  • Physical Domain - Constraints are defined as bounds on acceptable solutions. In order to satisfy the specified functional requirements, we have to identify and choose the design parameters in this domain.
  • Process Domain - Finally, the system is specified in terms design parameters, and a process characterized by the process variables in this domain has been developed for the business process.

 

 

Some of the books for Axiomatic design techniques are,