Lightweight creativity methods for idea generation and evaluation in the conceptual phase of lightweight and sustainable design

Regarding the implementation of lightweight design in products, there are various guidelines, principles and methods that support the developers methodically throughout the entire design process. Such methods often pursue the goal of optimizing an existing product by reducing the amount of consumed material (e.g., topology optimization). A more effective way to apply lightweight design lies in fostering the creativity and intuitiveness of engineers to develop miscellaneous concepts with the capability to provide far greater mass reductions in contrast to smaller efficiency enhancements. Supported through the breakdown of assemblies via thinking in terms of functions along the paradigm of systems engineering, existing creativity techniques (e.g., “brainstorming” or “6-hats-method”) and evaluation methods (e.g., “point scoring”) for idea generation and evaluation have been analyzed and rethought from a lightweight and sustainable design perspective resulting in so called lightweight creativity methods (LWCM). The methods were tested on a use case from the field of robotics, which enabled the identification of the potential of LWCM for a lightweight and sustainable design.