Literature Review: Exploring the Role of Set-Based Design in Trade-Off Analytics

Set-Based Design (SBD) has been developed as an alternative to Point-Based Design (PBD). SBD has been successfully used by Toyota in the automotive industry and currently has significant interest in the Department of the Navy, Department of Defense (DoD) organizations, and several researchers. In fact, in 2008 the then Commander of the Naval Sea Systems Command sent a memo entitled “Ship Design and Analysis Tool Goals” that required the use of SBD and the need of new tools for trade-off analysis. SBD develops sets of design solutions that span the design space, evaluates the design sets, delays design decisions to eliminate sets until adequate information is available, and documents the rationale for eliminating sets. This paper provides a literature review of published SBD research, and then focuses on developing trade-off analytics to support SBD decision-making to define value, evaluate sets, incorporate new information, and eliminate sets. The proposed approach is to align SBD terms with common systems engineering terms; identify a process to create design sets; develop a mathematical foundation for SBD evaluation in the cost versus value space; and illustrate how trade-off analytics can support SBD decision-making. This paper concludes that trade-off analytics provides a consistent and credible tool to perform trade-off analyses for SBD.