Methodology for Determining the Acceptability of Given Designs in Uncertain Environments

Managers wish to verify that a particular engineering design meets their requirements. This design's future environment will differ from the environment assumed during the design. Therefore it is crucial to determine which variations in the environment may make this design unacceptable. The proposed methodology estimates which uncertain environmental parameters are important (so managers can become pro-active) and which parameter combinations (scenarios) make the design unacceptable. The methodology combines simulation, bootstrapping, and metamodeling.The methodology is illustrated through a simulated manufacturing system, including fourteen uncertain parameters of the input distributions for the various arrival and service times. These parameters are investigated through sixteen scenarios, selected through a two-level fractional-factorial design. The resulting simulation Input/Output (I/O) data are analyzed through a first-order polynomial metamodel and bootstrapping. A second experiment gives some outputs that are indeed unacceptable. Polynomials fitted to the I/O data estimate the border line (frontier) between acceptable and unacceptable environments