This grant provides funding to organize and conduct a one-day workshop to explore the future of multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO) and its ability to advance the design of complex systems. The objectives of the workshop are to: (1) identify and document promising future directions for MDO and related research, (2) articulate successful industrial implementations of MDO and identify the challenges with practical implementation of MDO methods and tools, (3) explore relationships between ongoing complex systems design initiatives and MDO, and (4) define affinity groups and target specific proposal solicitations and research opportunities. The workshop will engage 50 people from academia, industry, and government agencies by inviting participants from a wide range of engineering and design communities based on the Steering Committee?s extensive network of contacts. The results of the workshop will be documented in a report that will be distributed through a website and an email list-serve that is maintained by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics? MDO Technical Committee.
If successful, the workshop will identify future research directions in MDO and new synergies with related engineering disciplines and complex systems design initiatives. While many of MDO?s founders are still active and engaged in the community, the focus of MDO has shifted dramatically in the past decade as new faculty and researchers are finding novel ways to use and deploy MDO methods and tools to a wide array of problems. MDO is thus at a cross-roads, and this workshop will help ensure that its future remains bright. Meanwhile, understanding the barriers to its implementation in industry will enable future advancements and allow MDO to realize its full potential. MDO methods and tools will also have much broader impact if a wider audience is engaged in the research. Thus, researchers and engineers outside of the MDO community (e.g., complex systems, systems engineering) will be invited to the workshop to help identify strategies for reaching broader audiences through synergistic efforts. The long-term goal of the workshop is to help reposition MDO as a practical tool for the design of complex engineered systems that can help overcome the cost overruns, schedule delays, and ensuing problems that currently plague many design and development programs.
The NSF workshop entitled "The Future of Multidisciplinary Design Optimization --- Advancing the Design of Complex Systems" took place on September 16, 2010 in Forth Worth, Texas. The workshop was collocated with the 13th AIAA/ISSMO Multidisciplinary Analysis Optimization Conference and was attended by 48 people --- 26 (56.5%) from academia, 12 from industry (26.1%), and 8 (17.4%) from government agencies. The participants also included 8 (17.4%) international participants, representing universities and companies from Canada, Turkey, Portugal, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. The objectives of the workshop were to: (1) identify and document promising future directions for MDO and related research, (2) articulate successful industrial implementations of MDO and identify the challenges with practical implementation of MDO methods and tools, (3) explore relationships between complex systems design initiatives and MDO, and (4) define affinity groups and target specific proposal solicitations and Requests for Proposals. The intellectual merit derived from discussions involving five speakers who present their views on the "state of the research" followed by a panel discussion. We gathered ideas from all participants, as to which topics merit an in-depth analysis and discussion. Five main topics where identified: (1) Modeling and the Design Space; (2) Metrics, Objectives, and Requirements; (3) Coupling in Complex Engineered Systems; (4) Dealing with Uncertainty; and (5) People and Workflow. Each participant joined one of these groups and each group prepared a presentation summarizing their discussion. As a result of these discussions, five overarching themes were offered to advance MDO practice. First, MDO researchers need to engage disciplines outside of engineering and target opportunities outside of their traditional application areas. Second, MDO problem formulations must evolve to encompass a wider range of design criteria. Third, effective strategies are needed to put designers "back in the loop" during MDO. Fourth, the MDO community needs to do a better job of publicizing its successes to improve the "buy in" that is needed to advance MDO in academia, industry, and government agencies. Fifth, students and practitioners need to be better educated on systems design, optimization, and MDO methods and tools along with their benefits and drawbacks. The broader impacts of the workshop stem from steps the community takes to advance these ideas to strengthen and promote MDO beyond engineering. The complete list of participants and the presented slides can be found in the workshop website at: http://mdolab.engin.umich.edu/NSF_Workshop_2010/About.htmlA more detailed discussion of the findings of this workshop can be found in the following paper:T. W. Simpson and J. R. R. A. Martins. Multidisciplinary design optimization for complex engineered systems design: Report from an NSF workshop. Journal of Mechanical Design, 133(10):101002, October 2011. doi: 10.1115/1.4004465.
