This research: (1) treats variations in the "design concepts" posed by other members of the design team as "conceptual noise"; (2) shows how to incorporate such noise into "conceptually robust" decisions; (3) describes a method for using the same analysis to provide preference information back to the other team members; and (4) provides a procedure for determining whether to release the conceptually robust design or to wait for further design certainty. Taguchi's approach is used as a starting point because it is widely known. This project generalizes concurrent distributed decision making procedure by employing genetic algorithms. Concurrent engineering processes involve multi-functional teams, which make decisions about many parts of the productproduction system and aspects of the product life-cycle simultaneously. This research argues that such concurrent distributed decisions must be based on communications about sets of possibilities rather than single solutions. By extending Taguchi's parameter design concepts, it develops a robust and distributed decision-making procedure based on such communications. That is, it shows how a member of a design team can make appropriate decisions based on incomplete information from the other members of the team.
