Integrated Product-Process Design: Conceptual Framework for Data Driven Manufacturing Resource Selection

New product design and new product process design are important attributes in order a company to survive and sustain in competitive market. However, many new products which have been developed from research and development cannot compete in world market due to product performance issue. In addition, design of new product is unable to cope with the process design and machine capability in manufacturing process. The aims of this study is to identify the relationship between new product design and new product process design on new product performance in manufacturing industry. Random sampling and survey have been used by distributing questionnaire to 400 respondents for final study. Finally 80 respondents had replied with the respond rate of 20%. The study result shows that the extent level in new product design and new product process design are moderate and high level respectively. Furthermore, there is a significant relationship between new product process design and organisational performance (r(80) = 0.570, p < 0.05) in SMEs. However, there are no significant relationships between new product design and organisational performance (r(80) = 0.092, p > 0.05). The study is important for SMEs to gain insight on the effect of new product design and new product process design towards organizational performance.

Automation and robots are frequently mentioned as solutions to industrywide problems of increasing costs, declining productivity, skilled‐labor short‐ages, safety, and quality control. Despite numerous attempts to develop automation and robotics for construction field operations, few practical applications can be found on construction sites today. The promises of robotics remain unfulfilled, and attempts to transfer automation technology from manufacturing have not been optimal. Identification of opportunities for automation requires analysis of construction work at the appropriate level. This paper presents a hierarchical taxonomy that divides construction field operations into several levels. The basic‐task level is the appropriate level for construction automation. The paper presents a set of basic tasks that describe construction field work. Construction is compared to highly repetitive manufacturing operations to gain insight into the relationships among product design, process design, and fabrication. In manufacturing, product and process design are closely interrelated. In construction, process design is completely separate from product design, but is intimately related to fabrication. Until construction product and process design become more highly integrated, automation must occur at the basic‐task level. Advances in construction automation will continue to be characterized by a machine performing physically intensive basic tasks, operated by a human craftsperson performing the information‐intensive basic tasks.

The Cambridge Engineering Selector (CES) is a tool that focuses on material, process, and shape combinations of product design. The Resource Consumption Model (RCM) is a tool that focuses on production process resources, resource costs, production volume, production capacity, and manufacturing cycle time. Both tools help identify viable manufacturing process alternatives to meet stated manufacturing objectives.

In order to attain the true integration of computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing not only is a smooth flow of information required, but also decision making for both product design and process design must be synthesized. In this paper an integrated design process is proposed in which decisions concerning both product design and process design are simultaneously made. According to the proposed design procedures, an integrated optimization problem is formulated. This optimization is expressed as a multiobjective optimization problem which produces many Pareto optimum solution sets corresponding to combinations of materials used for parts. The algorithm for solving the problem is also presented. The proposed method is applied to designing a cylindrical co-ordinate robot, thereby demonstrating the effectiveness of conducting a simultaneous process through product design and process design.

PurposeThere are three distinct functions in the product realisation chain (product design, process design, and process execution) and thus there are two interfaces (product design – process design; process design – process execution) rather than one (product – manufacturing). This fact supports a need to shift from dyadic relationships to triadic relationships and from the traditionally single interface concept of design for manufacture (DFM) to multiple “design for” elements. This study seeks to discuss this issue.Design/methodology/approachThrough an in – depth case study in an electronics plant and qualitative data analysis, we reveal the existence and functions of these “design for” elements are revealed, and also the link between the implementation of these elements to the levels of process engineering capability.FindingsProactive and capable process engineering allows improvement of technical coordination among functions. This enables the “design for” mechanisms for both upstream elements (product design) and downstream elements (process execution); this has a positive impact on the performance of product realisation (especially time to market) and thus operational competitiveness.Research limitations/implicationsSince this is a single case study, future empirical research with larger sample sizes should provide further validation of these findings and demonstrate better generalisability of developed concepts.Practical implicationsThis paper highlights several initiatives, conceptually linked to the appropriate “design for” elements, which may be applied in manufacturing settings to support product realisation objectives. Process design, as a significant and proactive intermediate component, should be given sufficient attention and investment.Originality/valueThe study expands the existing DFM concept to several new “design for” concepts and discusses some implementation‐related issues.

Virtual reality (VR) technology improves engineering activities, enabling a better understanding of products and processes. A complete conversion from the existing CAx software to a VR environment could improve product and process design activities, leading to new practices. This article aims to provide key insights, technical evidences, and related impacts on the engineering activities of industrial companies while integrating the existing systems with VR as a supporting tool for product and process design. The results indicate improved design and limited negative impacts related to errors during the manufacturing phase. An action research study involving Oil&Gas manufacturing companies was conducted to explore the following four CAx-VR scenarios: CAD–VR for ergonomics/reachability, CAE(CFD)–VR and CAE(FEM)–VR for abstract data visualization, and CAM–VR for packaging. For each scenario, applicative cases focusing on Oil&Gas products, such as multistage centrifugal pumps and ball valves, have been investigated. Furthermore, a detailed discussion of the involved chain of software applications and impacts on the engineering activities for each scenario establishes the reliability of the integrated environment for CAD, CAE, and CAM data immersive visualization.

Challenges in the design of formulated products: multiscale process and product design

This paper describes the process planning techniques we developed for use in an Integrated Product and Process Design (IPPD) tool for the design and manufacture of microwave transmit/receive modules. Given a collection of data about the design of a microwave module, the IPPD tool uses a combination of AI planning and optimization-based tradeoff analysis to produce a collection of alternative designs and alternative process plans that have Pareto optimal values for manufacturing and purchasing lead time, process yield, cost, and number of suppliers. The IPPD tool provides a GUI for generating and examining these alternatives in real time, to help users modify the design to improve its cost and productivity.

A satisfaction-driven game theoretic approach is developed with application to team-based concurrent product and process design (CPPD). This team approach for CPPD is based upon optimization formalism in which the design team is responsible to optimize overall product functionality (or performance) and the manufacture team pursues to minimize total manufacturing cost. This dual-team model characterizes the respective aspects of product design and process design. In particular, the preference of each team against a design configuration is characterized through the application of fuzzy set theory, whereby the method of Design for Satisfaction (DfS) can be applied to seek the most favorite design that best fulfills the team goal. Based on the strategic team paradigms derived from game theory, fuzzy set operators are used to aggregate satisfaction metrics of two teams. As a result, three team design models plus related algorithms are developed to reveal typical team interactions in the context of design computations. An illustrative example is worked out to demonstrate the satisfaction-driven team design models.

Advancing Taiwan's traditional craft products: A modular product design model of manufacturing technologies

During the New Product Development (NPD) cycle, it is important to focus and integrate relevant information into the stages of product conceptualisation, design and development so that they can be used for product and process design effectively. In this paper, a Generic Product and Process Development System (GPDS), which integrates knowledge-based technologies of Rule-Based Expert System (RBES) and Case-Based Reasoning (CBR), is proposed to facilitate product and process development. Although RBES is adopted for sorting product design criteria, relevant past cases are retrieved by the CBR system during product and process design stages. In doing so, previous knowledge in terms of rules and past practices will be made use of during the product and process design stages, resulting in an enhancement of the efficiency of design and operations. By applying GPDS in Hasbro Fast East Limited, the new product design life cycle is greatly shortened with significant reduction in the total development cost.

Product design decisions have significant impact on the environment at all stages of the product life cycle. The designer can make significant contribution to the environmental impact of a product by including design for environment (DFE) criteria up-front in the design phase. The up-front incorporation of DFE criteria adds design rules and guidelines above and beyond the current design criteria. The interdisciplinary nature of DFE, and, at times, its contradictory criteria can make its implementation confusing and overwhelming, at least at the beginning. To help alleviate the confusion and facilitate the acceptance and eventual incorporation of DFE as part of product design criteria, both the product design and product management community need a friendly DFE tool. In this paper we put forth a framework for the development of a user-friendly, easy-to-use software tool that should help both managers and product and process designers evaluate the environmental compatibility of products and their associated manufacturing processes. Of particular interest to the authors is the manufacture of electronic components and assemblies which involve process intensive, semi-continuous, and repetitive wet chemical and physical operations that define circuit patterns on polymers, ceramic and silicon substrates and associated component assembly processes. In this paper we outline an environmental figure of merit for product and process designs that provides the designer the capability to assess the environmental compatibility of various product and process choices. A brief discussion of the PC-based tool, its architecture and a sample application in product and process design will be given.

Additive Manufacturing increasingly becomes a viable alternative to conventional manufacturing technologies. However, the knowledge and awareness to achieve a ready-for-manufacturing and quality-ensured design of additively manufactured products are mostly lacking. Knowledge from the manufacturing process on how certain process variables affect the product requirements must already be considered in product design to assure and potentially enhance the quality a priori, thus saving time and cost-intensive iterations. Therefore, this knowledge must be front-loaded as a basis to suitably adapt product and process design simultaneously. This contribution therefore proposes a framework for the simultaneous product and process design synthesis of existing designs by providing insight knowledge about product and process design specific to Fused Layer Modeling. This is achieved via a consolidated ontology-based knowledge representation and its integration in a design environment. Thus, the aim, in contrast to most existing approaches, is to provide this knowledge on a product- and application-specific basis to parallelise product and process design for non-assembly mechanisms and exploit currently unused potential concerning the interaction between the different domains. This can shorten development times and also compensate for a lack of background knowledge in certain areas. A practical use case highlights the general procedure, benefits, and applicability.

A computer aided engineering system for development of catalytic processes

Today supply chain management has become one of the crucial factors for gaining and sustaining a competitive advantage. Enterprises that can more effectively manage their supply chain network have a higher likelihood of success in the marketplace. To this end, companies need not only make the “make” or “buy” decisions but also differentiate across potential suppliers in order to improve operational performance, and hence, supplier selection is one of the key decisions aiding effective supply chain management. Many studies have also pointed out that the integration of product and supply chain is a key factor for profitability and efficiency. However, prior studies mostly address supply chain performance after the creation of a new product; and only a few studies discuss when and how to incorporate supply chain decisions during product design. In the studies that cover product design, product family and product platform concepts are presented as enabling vehicles for mass customization, which require a considerable investment, and hence might be out of reach for small to medium size enterprises (SME). Accordingly, there is a need to develop a methodology that can consider manufacturability and supply chain issues at the product design stage. This paper presents a graph theory based optimization methodology to tackle this problem. The supplier selection issue is considered by evaluating its impact on both engineering (e.g., process planning) and operational performance (e.g., cost and time), which are then aggregated as the supply chain performance at the conceptual design stage. A case study in the bicycle industry demonstrates the advantages of this methodology. The synchronized structure of the supply chain and the product design results in simultaneous optimization of both design and supply chain decisions during the early design stages.