The study of variability in engineering design—An appreciation and a retrospective

Abstract

Abstract We explore the concept of parameter design applied to the production of glass beads in the manufacture of metal-encapsulated transistors. The main motivation is to complete the analysis hinted at in the original publication by Jim Morrison in 1957, which was an early example of discussing the idea of transmitted variation in engineering design, and an influential paper in the development of analytic parameter design as a data-centric engineering activity. Parameter design is a secondary design activity focused on selecting the nominals of the design variables to achieve the required target performance and to simultaneously reduce the variance around the target. Although the 1957 paper is not recent, its approach to engineering design is modern.