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Increasingly, product engineers must influence customer satisfaction with robust designs, as opposed to waiting for manufacturing to build quality into a product. To enable and facilitate these efforts, simulation and analysis must be used to guide the system to an improved or even optimal state versus merely a functional one. The integration of Multibody System Analysis (MSA) with Design of Experiments (DOE) creates a powerful combination of tools for thorough investigation of a specified design space, identification of the optimal system configuration, and illustration of the effects of system changes on a given output. This paper demonstrates this approach for a specific output: the vertical loads into a suspension's front strut/shock tower due to a severe pothole road event. This event is designed to test the energy management function of a suspension for severe impact events. Improper energy management leads to excessive forces transmitted to the body structure.