Set-Based Design, Model-Based Systems Engineering, and Sequential Decision Processes

An emerging concept to overcome the challenges of exploring a large, complex and expensive solution space such as with Department of Defense systems is to employ Set-Based Design tightly coupled to Model-Based Systems Engineering. This concept recognizes that designers start with a broad set of potential solutions, using models in the design process to gain information and to reduce the size of the set of designs under consideration, and then sequentially advancing through smaller sets of solutions using models of increasing fidelity until a design is determined. This process of iterative refinement can itself be studied, and so in this work we treat the design process formally as a sequential decision process in order to enable its analysis. This paper summarizes ongoing research and presents theoretical developments in this formalization of Set-Based Design.