The previous sections introduced the main areas of study that are covered in this research.
They also highlighted possible analyses that were lacking in current systems design pro-cesses. The deficiencies of current engineering design methods, coupled with the promise of strategic design, is the impetus for this work. The observations made provide guidance for the development of formal objectives that this research aims to accomplish.
Objective 1: Expand the engineering technical design space to evaluate the market performance of large-scale aerospace systems.
Objective 2: Introduce mechanisms that quantitatively model competitive sce-narios and their impact on the resource allocation for a portfolio of engine ar-chitectures.
Objective 3: Establish a framework for down-selecting engine strategies that accounts for uncertain development periods and that benchmarks potential de-sign performance against the competition.
The purpose of the first objective is to create a foundation within the conceptual design process that enables engineers to introduce economic models and their attributes into the parametric design space of aerospace systems. Particularly in the design of commercial systems, revenue and cost models are essential to evaluating economic success. A unified framework that allows engineers to map performance and economic requirements concur-rently within a single design space is also beneficial from a managerial perspective. The concept of market performance is meant to focus on the economic success of a particular design within a particular market segment. Throughout this research, this performance will be evaluated in terms of market share and its subsequent value to the manufacturer. The task of expanding the existing technical design space to one that incorporates market at-tributes is no easy task. The first focus area for this research will be to investigate which elements are needed to create an environment that is capable of modeling both technical and economic metrics concurrently.
The second objective builds on the first by taking the environment one step further to analyze the dynamics of competition between two or more entities. The goal here is to inves-tigate methods and techniques that can quantitatively measure competitive scenarios. Of particular interest are techniques that provide competitive response strategies to facilitate the selection of engine architectures. For this reason, the second focus area of this research is dedicated to investigating competitive methods and techniques. Finally, the third objec-tive is meant to guide the selection process of engine architectures. When making engine architecture choices the number of decision criteria is often overwhelming. The importance of each criteria can also has a significant impact on the choice of design architecture. This is a foreseeable challenge and thus a third focus area is to investigate which criteria are most
important to a manufacturer when selecting an engine architecture design.
These objectives provide the direction that is necessary to answer the global research question of this research:
How can aerospace architecture solutions be generated in the context of uncertain competitive scenarios and be strategically explored for optimal selection?
The traditional design process as applied to aircraft engine design does not have the means to address the issue of strategic decision making early in the conceptual phases. It is now possible to look into answering questions such as what path(s) overall will maximize return on investment based on market changes or customer makeup? This dissertation provides an introduction to and examination of the strategic decision making aspects of commercial engine selection and design. Additionally, since the engine design/selection problem involves making key economic decisions in a competitive environment, it is reasonable to introduce some aspects of game theory within the decision analysis.
The development of a methodology for analyzing market competition in the conceptual design phases of design is presented in this dissertation. The motivation and problem def-inition sections served to provide a frame of reference and to delineate the scope of the research. Chapter 2 provides a background of the relevant methods and techniques that characterize the state-of-art. Innovative competitive analysis techniques are the subject of Chapter 3. The research questions and hypotheses are then formulated in Chapter 4 based on the literature review and competitive techniques. These questions and hypotheses guide the development of the methodology. Chapter 5 implements the methodology on a commer-cial engine selection problem as a proof-of-concept. The dissertation concludes in Chapter 6 with a revisitation of research objectives and recommendations for future work.
Figure 1.9: Dissertation Structure
Chapter II
LITERATURE REVIEW
The purpose of reviewing the literature is to survey existing methods, processes or techniques that address and help achieve some or all of the research objectives. Throughout this process it is possible to determine if and where there are gaps in the literature that are consistent with the top-level research objectives established in the previous chapter. Based on the information gathered in this review, existing gaps will be explored and bench-marked to determine where more advanced methods may be needed to enable the development of the proposed competitive analysis method.
There are five main sections to this chapter that are loosely organized to fit within the scheme set up by the three research focus areas described in the previous chapter. The first two sections introduce the field of aircraft engine design and provide a historical overview of commercial engine selection studies as well as recent challenges in the design process.
A review of modern systems design methods is conducted and together with the strategic analysis and planning section addresses the first research area. The fourth section reviews the literature associated with project selection and primarily addresses the third research area. Finally, the fifth section reviews competitive methods and analytical approaches in both the business and engineering domains and bounds the scope of the second research area.
The sixth section provides a summary and a set of criteria to help identify the strengths and weaknesses of the competitive techniques.