What is an Engineering Design Process?

Question

What is an Engineering Design Process?

Answer 1

customer needs evaluation - market analysis, surveys and interviews, product design specification

concept generation -  brainstorming, examining the competition!

concept evaluation and elimination - preliminary calculations, product architecture, quality functional deployment

embodiment design - more calculations! CAD design, materials selection, computer simulations (Finite Element Analysis etc)

detail design - Bill of Materials, manufacturing protocols, the details!

prototyping - build it!

testing - break it!

Engineering Design is an ITERATIVE process!  The lines between the stages are a little blurred!  

Concurrent considerations are: design for manufacture, design for reliability, design for maintainability, design for ease of upgrade-ability, design for modularity, office politics etc!

Answer 2

Simply put, it's the entire process by which a product gets designed. Steps include gathering requirements, understanding your current capabilities, researching possibilities, designing components, integrating them into a final product, testing and validating the product.

Answer 3

Engineering Design Process can be divided up into a ten-step process, which includes

identifying a need,

defining the problem,

conducting research,

narrowing the research,

analyzing set criteria,

finding alternative solutions,

analyzing possible solutions,

making a decision,

presenting the product,

and communicating and selling the product.

This process is not universal for all engineers or all processes. Individuals utilize their personal knowledge and experiences to follow the path to design success.