Title: The autogenetic design theory and its practical application

Authors: Konstantin Kittel; Matthias Fritzsche; Sfiandor Vajna

Addresses: Chair of Information Technologies in Mechanical Engineering, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, D-39106 Magdeburg, Germany. ' Chair of Information Technologies in Mechanical Engineering, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, D-39106 Magdeburg, Germany. ' Chair of Information Technologies in Mechanical Engineering, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, D-39106 Magdeburg, Germany

Abstract: The main focus of the paper is to present the autogenetic design theory (ADT) as an evolutionary view of the design process. The ADT is an approach that transfers procedures from the natural evolution into the field of product development. The main thesis of the ADT is that natural evolution and the process of developing products are mainly similar. In order to fulfil requirements and boundary conditions of any kind (that may change at any time), both processes look for appropriate solution possibilities in a certain area, and try to optimise those that are actually promising (in an iterative way) by varying parameters and combinations of these solutions. In the natural evolution, these parameters are the organic bases, in the field of product development, these are the design parameters of the product. This paper gives an introduction to the ADT and presents one aspect (the description of solution space) in more detail. It also presents two practical examples. The first example shows, how a subset of methods of the ADT were successfully applied to improve a product. The second example shows, how even complex problems can be prepared for an optimisation using methods from the ADT.

Keywords: product development; autogenetic design theory; optimisation; autogenesis; design process.

DOI: 10.1504/IJDE.2011.045130

International Journal of Design Engineering, 2011 Vol.4 No.2, pp.91 - 113

Published online: 30 Sep 2014 *

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