In this paper, system design methodologies for optimizing heterogenous power devices in electrical engineering are investigated. The concept of Integrated Optimal Design (IOD) is presented and a simplified but typical example is given. It consists in finding Pareto-optimal configurations for the motor drive of an electric vehicle. For that purpose, a geometric optimization method (i.e the Hooke and Jeeves minimization procedure) associated with an objective weighting sum and a Multiobjective Genetic Algorithm (i.e. the NSGA-II) are compared. Several performance issues are discussed such as the accuracy in the determination of Pareto-optimal configurations and the capability to well spread these solutions in the objective space
