Structuring a Foundation Basis for Semantic Interoperability in Product Development Process

The relationship between system theory and the product design, the process of product development has been described. It compared the merits and demerits of serial and parallel product development processes and, with the guidelines of system theory, put forward and analyzed the planning actions and corresponding necessity existed in the indistinct initial phase in product development process. It also analyzed the optimizing effect of planning actions in product design & development process. Thus, it obtained the model of product design & development process based on system theory so as to clarify the indistinct initial phase, shorten product development time and, improve the effectiveness of enterprise's product development.

DFMEA is a systematic and scientific method for new product design and development, which is applicable throughout the entire process of new product design and development. In this paper, DFMEA method is adopted in the systematic analyzing of the million-kilowatt nuclear power steam turbine rotor new product design and development process. On the basis of the introduction of product characteristics and current development requirement, DFMEA is introduced to the design and development process, applying the block diagram and structure-function matrix to locate the possible failure factors. Subsequently, the evaluation criteria of Severity (S), Occurrence (O), and Detection (D) are introduced and defined. According to the criteria, the Risk Priority Numbers (RPN) and Action Priority (AP) of key risks are sorted, therefore indicating the terms critical to product quality improvement. Through the application of DFMEA, an effective risk identification and analysis of the million-kilowatt nuclear power steam turbine rotor is carried out, achieving the results that operational failures are advanced to the design stage to implement countermeasures, therefore realizing the improvement of product and system operation reliability, optimization of project cycle and manufacturing cost reduction. DFMEA promotes the optimization of overall new product development process. Meanwhile it provides ideas for the subsequent design optimization methods of similar kinds.

In the last two decades, lean product development and design processes, which have rapidly penetrated the automotive industry companies with all their functions and spread globally, have come to life with measurements, benchmarks and flow maps on value creation or value addition in new product project stages. In the literature review, two customer-oriented approaches, namely lean product development and user experience design, have been widely adopted within the discipline of new product design. However, the lack of comparative efficiency measurements or studies addressing their integration in scientific publications constitutes the primary motivation of this research. Furthermore, the selection of the research scope and boundaries is based on convenience sampling, enabled by direct qualitative research with companies managerial or design positions in the Turkish automotive supplier industry. The main objective of this study is to conduct a comparative analysis aimed at integrating user experience activities with lean product development process flows, and to reveal metric values that enhance efficiency through overall system optimization. On the other hand, the most important recommendation of the study is that the basic process will benefit positively by including user experience activities, which are the most important application of customer-oriented design approaches, into the highly efficient lean product development flow. Therefore, the study conducted with the mixed research method was completed under the preference of quantitative face-to-face interview method in the in-depth questioning of the qualitative numerical data obtained by the questionnaire method. User experience activities, which are newer and less widespread than lean product development processes, have also revealed the frequency of project-based, customer-oriented design activities, along with the demographic organizational structure of the participating companies in the automotive industry, such as the age of establishment, number of employees, number of designers, etc.

Industrial revolutions (IRs) are mostly associated with how transformations regarding the operations of an enterprise affect said enterprise’s manufacturing systems. However, the impact of these transformations exceeds the production systems themselves; rather, they affect the entire value chain, from the product design and development process (PDDP) through manufacturing and supply-chain management to marketing and disposal. As the new PDDP to a large extent defines the value chain for a company, the challenge lies in ensuring that the designed product will help the company fully benefit from the IRs. By analysing the 4th IR, the authors reveal that few publications shed light on this aspect. Consequently, the purpose of this study is to establish features and properties that will shape the PDDP throughout the 4th IR and into a smart design engineering. To accomplish this, the authors conduct a systematic review of the literature, which provides ten findings. These findings are then analysed by 11 specialists both from academia and the industry, and the findings’ relations to the 4th IR and their impact on the product development process is discussed. By establishing these findings, this paper provides a platform for the understanding of what could potentially shape smart design engineering and its design-related activities.

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.

Pressures and procedures for the design of safe consumer products

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.

As researchers seek to understand value co-creation in more detail, it is essential to explore both tangible and intangible products in more depth. This case study provides an understanding of the intangible value created with a tangible product. The Thermomix is a high-end multi-purpose cooking device and through social media, communities of users have increased the value of the device. This article argues that value can be created through the intangible offerings, even when a physical product exists.

This research explored a new direction of improving collaborative design by performance measurement. More specifically, a novel 3-dimensional performance measurement model is developed and the purpose of this model is to help project managers improve team collaboration by indicating strengths and weaknesses of team members during the project development process. Considering the complexity of collaborative design work, a multiple criteria model is proposed to reflect the design dynamics, which highlights five performance indicators: efficiency, effectiveness, collaboration, management skills and innovation. These five indicators are mostly influenced by role-based performance measurement criteria (the second dimension). Design and development process (time) is also considered (the third dimension). This 3D model allows all involved design participants to measure work performance at any time during the product development process. In order to develop this model, the role-based task analysis and industrial survey methods were utilized. Three groups of role-based product design and development performance measurement criteria were identified for measuring design performance of the top managers, middle managers and individual designers in a project team. A 3-dimensional performance measurement method was proposed to calculate final performance scores from a performance measurement matrix. The proposed model was evaluated as a tool which can support project managers to reduce potential design and collaboration risks and increase confidence in decision-making process. The model has been discussed on implementing in a web-based application for measuring design performance throughout the product design and development process.

This paper provides a methodological proposal for the design and development process of a remotely operated vehicle (ROV). The design core and product design specifications (PDS) of Pugh’s Total Design model are considered, with a focus on the early stages of the product design and development process. A modularization of the functional groups of an ROV is proposed, focusing attention on the sensor system. The main concepts regarding ROVs are presented, Pugh’s Total Design model is explained, justifying the application interest in technological projects, a methodological proposal adapted to ROV projects is provided, based on Pugh’s Total Design model, with special interest in the early stages of the new product development process (NPD), the suitability of applying our own model of industrial design engineering in an ROV system is analyzed, and the contribution of this study is evaluated, proposing future work and lines of research.

PurposeThe objective of this research was to compare the behavior of two methods of managing an engineering change request (ECR) process, namely, perform changes as they occur or in a batch.Design/methodology/approachThis comparison was accomplished by creating a computer model of a new product development (NPD) process and simulating ECR management. The model connects process design and process characteristics (teamwork, parallel activities) to process outcomes (development time, effort). The first method executes the ECR promptly and the rework is done as soon as the ECR is initiated. In the second method, ECRs are batched; in other words, a number of them are accumulated, and processing of the ECRs takes place when a batch of a certain size has accumulated. Thus, the change requests are grouped into a batch, and then, the section(s) of the process to effect the change(s) is (are) reworked.FindingsBatching ECRs was found to be superior to doing them one at a time.Research limitations/implicationsFuture work should focus on refining the computer model and differentiating ECRs by assigning priorities to incoming ECRs.Practical implicationsFor product development managers, processing ECRs in batches is preferable than attending to them on an individual basis. Nevertheless, in some situations ECRs require immediate attention. A mechanism will always be needed to deal with situations directly. Also, in terms of batching, ECRs could be processed in groups on a periodic basis. Periodically performing ECRs due to new design versions or prototypes in a timely manner is a good compromise between a random batch mode and doing them individually.Originality/valueThe paper shows that batch processing is superior to executing ECRs promptly as they are received. This result has been shown through the use of a computer model of NPD. To the authors' knowledge, no other studies have used computer modeling to study this problem.

The current product development scenario challenges manufacturing industry to deliver improved products to the market while ensuring improved quality. To ensure the best value, companies need to share product requirements effectively from various sources and domains, but there are still misinterpretation and mistakes on this process, regarding semantic interoperability obstacles in the context of the process of requirements’ gathering, translating, and reusing them. To help in solving these problems, this study proposes an approach to aid the gathering of product knowledge, extracting it, and translating the knowledge for further use along the Integrated Product Development Process (IPDP). The approach consisted of analysing current issues of the topics, followed by the development of a novel approach, to then be further tested in an experimental case. Issues found on literature point to research gaps related to semantic reconciliation and the extraction of knowledge perspectives, in which semantic issues are approached through different points of view and multiple domains. The proposed approach considers unprocessed product requirements, further translated in features, and by that refining product knowledge during IPDP and enabling it to be reusable. The proposed solution shows a new method to collect and translate product requirements, while gathering its knowledge and transforming it in product features. The tests in an experimental case have shown a reduction in development time, and an increase in product quality, having significant impacts in reducing costs of development while ensuring correct communication and effectively sharing information.KeywordsSemantic web approachesKnowledge managementReference ontologiesStandardisation management and strategies

Improving product sustainability is becoming an increasingly significant challenge for modern enterprises. A growing number of manufacturers are interested in enhancing product sustainability throughout the product life cycle. This study is concerned with using case-based reasoning to identify ways of improving product sustainability and select variables for model specification. Parametric models are applied to search for opportunities to improve product sustainability. This can be achieved through changes introduced at the product design stage. Simulations are performed using constraint-satisfaction modeling to identify conditions for achieving the sustainability targets of new products. Constraint-satisfaction modeling provides a suitable framework for finding all possible sustainability-enhancing changes (if any) during the new product development process. These changes may support R&D specialists in identifying opportunities to improve the sustainability of new products. We demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed approach with an example in which our method enabled a reduction in the product failure rate and an increase of battery lifespan for a robot vacuum cleaner line. We analyzed several factors affecting two targets of product sustainability: minimizing the product failure rate and maximizing battery lifespan. Our findings indicate that R&D staff size is the biggest factor in reducing the product failure rate, and that battery capacity is the most significant factor in battery lifespan.

Highly Iterative Product Development Within The Tool and Die Making Industry

Development and utilization of a Process-oriented Information Model for sustainable manufacturing