9.3.2 Design to Decision Objectives – Decision Support in the Aircraft Engineering Process

Abstract The aircraft development process is a very complex, iterative and decision driven process. For future aircraft development programs, running within extended enterprises, involving several stakeholders and giving consideration to changing objectives from infrastructural aspects to environmental impacts, the need for decision support is eminent. To address these issues, and improve the development process by a better process flow, avoidance of unnecessary iteration loops, reduction of lead time and development costs, an approach will be presented called Design to Decision Objectives (DtDO). This approach describes a flexible Decision Support Framework (DtDO Framework) that can be tailored to the specific needs of the various decision situations within an extended enterprise. Further it provides means to complement the company knowledge base in terms of decisions along the entire engineering process.