Lean Design and KBE

Design participants practise SBCE by reasoning, developing, and communicating about sets of solutions in parallel. As the design progresses, they gradually narrow their respective sets of solutions based on the knowledge gained. As they narrow, they commit to staying within the sets so that others can rely on their communication. In SBCE, critical design decisions are deliberately delayed until the last possible moment to ensure that customer expectations are fully understood and that the reached design meets the requirements of different functions. Lean Design is a product development in a knowledge-based environment. It supports design problem solving based on the learning cycle of “LAMDA” Look-Ask-Model-Discuss-Act to create the right knowledge environment. Knowledge Trade-off curve (ToC) is the key lean tool to enable the applications of SBCE.  ToC is a tool to create and visualise knowledge in the way to understand the relationship between various conflicting design parameters to each other.