Development of a methodology for concept selection in flexible design strategies

Concept Selection is the Rubicon in the design process. It is vital that the best initial concepts are selected, as they determine the direction of the design embodiment stage. This paper presents a review of present Concept Generation methods and Concept Selection methods. From this, a new methodology is proposed and demonstrated with a small case study. The methodology includes a compatibility matrix where the effect of mixing the concepts together is quantified by means of a compatibility index.