System-level application of the evolutionary product development process to manufactured goods: Regular Papers

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.

A major cause of many complications in the field of software architectures is the lack of appropriate abstractions for separating, combining and encapsulating concerns of various kinds in architectural descriptions. Architectures of most complex software-intensive systems involve concerns that inherently crosscut the natural boundaries of the elements composing the architecture descriptions. Crosscutting concerns intersect the common modularity of systems as prescribed by their architecture descriptions, by traversing both the components and connectors, i.e., the relationships among the components. Crosscutting concerns are critical aspects of many architectural problems. However, architectural descriptions written in special-purpose languages (ADLs) like Wright, Darwin, Rapide and Acme should support descriptions of multiple structures, which include diagrams, models and views, that intentionally address different kinds of concerns. ADLs should show how various concerns affect each other in architectural designs; they should also allow one to identify, analyze and elaborate architectural concerns that cut across several software components, such as transactions, security, load balancing, synchronization, reuse, customization, scalability, etc.; they should, but they do not. This dissertation presents a new approach to software architecture that is suitable for supporting concern-oriented development and documentation of architectures for software-intensive systems. This approach allows for creating and documenting a multidimensional software structure that is referred to as concern-oriented software architecture; it provides new mechanisms for encapsulating individual concerns into independent architectural constructs. The ultimate goal of this new approach is to provide support for achieving design by concerns all through the development and description of software architectures. Moving towards this goal, we present a particular concern-oriented architectural framework called Perspectival Concern-Spaces (PCS). The PCS Framework offers a flexible and extensible means a) for supporting advanced separation of concerns in architectural design, and in the construction and evolution of software-intensive systems; and b) for filling the gap between architectural descriptions and modern software development artifacts. To show the feasibility of the proposed approach, we provide new modeling techniques that are used to describe and apply an aspect-oriented architectural pattern, called the On-demand Remodularization pattern. We give several examples of how the PCS Framework can be used to integrate concern-oriented architectural documentations with mainstream software development artifacts.

Facing intensive changes in the external environment in a globally competitive market, as well as rapid technological changes and varied consumer demands, enterprise survival has become an important topic. Firms should focus on developing products that are higher quality and more reasonably priced than those of competitors, to increase their profits and establish a competitive advantage to satisfy and fulfill customer needs, making new product development an important topic for discussion. This study classified business models into two types, OBM and ODM, and classified four stages of new product development, Proposal and Planning stage, Product Development stage, Trial Run Planning stage, and Mass Production stage. This study examines networking firms in Taiwan using six case studies, to identify the representative activities during each NPD stage, such as product feasibility evaluation and product proposal establishment, as well as project team member determination/project milestone establishment and development budget estimation during the proposal and planning and product development stages, EVT proceeding in the product development stage, DVT proceeding and PVT proceeding in the trial run planning stage, and customer PO acceptance, shipment delivery and project final result survey in the mass production stage, and each activity will undoubtedly encounter different marketing, product development and process development problems.

Metric-based Evaluation of Implemented Software Architectures

Today's business and organisational community is well‐versed in the conventions of marketing orientation and the new product development process. Each is an integral component of both specialist texts on new product development (Crawford, 1997; Urban and Hauser, 1993; Hisrich and Peters, 1991; Kuczmarski, 1992) and generalist texts (Kotler, 1996; Stanton et al, 1994; McColl‐Kennedy et al, 1994; Kotler et al, 1994; McCarthy and Perrault, 1990). In the specialist texts, the new product development process can vary. For example, Crawford and Kuczmarski emphasise the contextualisation of the new product development process within a broader and preceding strategic or marketing planning emphasis than does Urban and Hauser. At the same time, some generalist work such as Kotler, McColl‐Kennedy et al, and Zikmund and d'Amico (1993) place decidely more emphasis on establishing a difference between the idea screening and product development stages. Nevertheless, the specialist texts concur on the general procedure being a linear one that involves eleven key stages. This is discussed in more detail in section 3.6.

This special issue is based on a collection of selected papers presented at the Fifth International Conference on Advanced Computing held in Chennai (Madras), India in December 97. The International Conference on Advanced Computing is organized annually in India by the Advanced Computing Society (ACS) which is a premier professional society set up in India to cater to the broad interests in the area of Advanced Computing. One of the significant activities of the Society is to organize regular Meetings/Conferences/Symposia. The Conferences are held annually in India during December. Out of the shortlisted papers presented at the Conference held in Chennai (Madras) during December 97, the following six papers were finally selected after a second round of detailed review of the papers. The first paper On designing and implementing collaborative system using Java-RMI by Rajeev R. Raje, Snehasis Mukhopadhyay, Michael Boyles and Nila Patel describe the use of Java-RMI in designing a collaborative information classifier. The principles of RMI, the details of the prototype, and some preliminary results are presented. The paper primarily concentrates on web-based computing paradigms. In the second paper A framework for performance-based program partitioning , Ram Subramanian and Santosh Pande present an efficient and accurate performance model based program-partitioning approach for parallel architectures. The interactions between computation and communication are captured through behavioral edges . The approach yields significant performance improvement. The third paper DDSCHED: a distributed dynamic real-time scheduling algorithm by Anup K. Bhattacharjee, K. Ravindranath, R. Mall and A. Pal presents a dynamic soft real-time scheduling algorithm for distributed systems. The algorithm is based on a local scheduler and a distributed scheduling scheme. The algorithm takes care of the network delays assuming that the communication protocol is CSMA/CD. In the fourth paper Generic operational decomposition for concurrent systems semantics and reflection , Annie Marcoux, Christine Maurel, Frederic Migeon and Patrick Salle discuss about the reflection in concurrent languages, particularly in actor-based languages. The main objective of the paper is to extend concurrent systems to reflection. The authors present a modular and dynamic description of entity operational management, and extend the decomposition to obtain reflective entities. The fifth paper Parallel programming using visual patterns by A. S. M. Sajeev proposes a two level approach to parallel programming within the context of a visual environment. The first level is the specification of patterns encapsulating process communation and synchronization, and the second level is the use of patterns for parallel programming. The approach encourages reuse of patterns. In the sixth paper An application framework for dynamic distributed software architectures , G. R. Ribeiro-Justo and P. R. F. Cunha present an object-oriented application framework for developing evolving (reconfigurable) software architectures for distributed systems. The application framework is called C++CL. Such a requirement is encountered in banking, industrial control and telecommunications applications. We are extremely thankful to the following reviewers who have helped us in reviewing the papers submitted for this special issue: Lawrence Jenkins N. Mohan Ram Nishit Narang Rajeev Shorey Sameer Adhikari K. Balaji K. Rajan Sumit Kasera Subhrajyothi Bhar Pankaj Sethi Ravindranath Kokku Guest Editors: L. M. Patnaik, Ravi Mittal and K. M. Mehta

Should product architectures be considered inputs to – or outputs from – new product development (NPD)? Whereas the mirroring hypothesis suggests the former, NPD stage models suggests the latter. Elaborating on these conflicting propositions, this paper analyses the relationships between product architectures and development processes in NPD projects. The analysis demonstrates how project managers use product architectures to interpret their tasks and devise appropriate responses to perceived challenges. Thus, architectures provide useful linkages between knowledge development and organisational change in R&D organisations.

With the growing use of UML diagrams for software architecture description and the importance of non-functional requirements evaluation at software architecture level, filling the scientific gap between architect and requirement analyst is considered to be significant. Software architects are not usually familiar with non-functional requirement analysis and are not able to analyze such requirements easily. On the other hand, non-functional requirements cannot be evaluated directly by UML diagrams. Therefore, the architect should annotate additional information of the nonfunctional requirements to software architecture description and then an executable model can be produced. These executable models can be petri nets, queuing networks, stochastic process algebra and etc. One kind of the UML diagrams that can be used to describe software architecture is component diagram. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm that enables an architect to transform a component diagram into an executable model based on different extensions of petri nets. Moreover, we show how to use this petri net model for performance evaluation and simulation and the implications of this transformation are described completely. Finally, to represent the usage of our proposed algorithm, we consider a case study as an example.

Based on the words about why we must study software architecture, this article analyzed what the idea of building software architecture based on design patterns acts on the process of software development, discussed the development trend of software architecture and design patterns, and pointed to the problems which need to pay your attention during the term of building software architecture based on design patterns. In addition this paper described how the MVC pattern works in J2EE and explained what responsibilities the various parts in MVC have.

The conventional product development process employs a design-build-break philosophy. The sequentially executed product development process often results in a prolonged lead-time and an elevated product cost. The proposed concurrent design and manu facturing (CDM) paradigm employs physics-based computational methods together with computer graphics techniques for product de sign. This proposed approach employs Virtual Prototyping (VP) technology to support a cross-functional team in analyzing product per formance, reliability, and manufacturing cost early in the product development stage; and in conducting quantitative trade-off for design decision making. Physical prototypes of the product design are then produced using Rapid Prototyping (RP) technique primarily for de sign verification purposes. The proposed CDM approach holds potential for shortening the overall product development cycle, improving product quality, and reducing product cost. A software tool environment that supports CDM for mechanical systems is being built at the Concurrent Design and Manufacturing Research Laboratory (http://cdm.ou.edu) at the University of Oklahoma. A snapshot of the envi ronment is illustrated using a two-stroke engine example. This paper presents three unique concepts and methods for product develop ment : (1) bringing product performance, quality, and manufacturing cost together in early design stage for design considerations, (2) supporting design decision-making through a quantitative approach, and (3) incorporating rapid prototyping for design verification through physical prototypes.

This research presents a quantifiable value modeling approach for tracking and optimizing value addition at different stages of the product development process (PDP) and supply chain management (SCM). While there is a vast abundance of papers in the literature harping on the need to maximize the value, especially in lean thinking context, in PDP and SCM, there is a dearth of propositions on how to quantitatively measure and optimize value at each stage of product development and supply chain. This paper presents a multi-dimensional value modeling approach that incorporates parameters and variables from different stages of PDP and SCM by mathematically mapping them on to two macroscopic metrics, namely Product Information Evolution and Risk Reduction. These two metrics are in turn modeled by incorporating value attribute variables such as performance, risk, schedule, cost, form, fit, function and timeliness from different stages of PDP-SCM such as customer needs ideation, product functions, inventory management, logistics management and product delivery. The efficacy of the proposed model was tested by utilizing it to measure value additions at different stages of PDP-SCM as well as the total value addition for an ordinance disposal (OD) robot product family, once developed and supplied using traditional production method and once using lean production method, with the underlying axiom being the lean method will result in higher value. To ensure a fair and accurate comparison, both production methods used the proposed mathematical value model and worked toward maximizing total value using nonlinear programming. The results showed that lean PDP-SCM method added higher value at each of the stages as well as total value when compared to the traditional PDP-SCM method thus establishing the proposed value model as a viable mathematical way to measure value. While the proposed value model passed test of efficacy against the lean axiom, further research is needed to test it against other established axioms to establish it as a robust mathematical way to measure value in PDP-SCM.

Manufacturing organizations faces many changes along with the occurrence of environmental changes, it comes from internal and external sources. Innovation become one of the keywords to help the organizations be more competitive, such as doing product development. First, digging through from the survey, the customer's needs as the initial planning phase, concept development, system level design, detail design, test and reparation details among the beginning of production. During the product development process, the Organization has not identified the potential waste in detail yet at each stage of product development. Moreover, the repair process becomes less effective. By using this concept, it will help in potential waste identify. The results showed that the stage of concept development had the highest frequency, for instance the common of lacking information related to the customers need products information which will be developed. Then, frequency is happened on the stage of the testing, and refinement, detail design, system level design and planning. Through the concept of lean VSM can be known by using a value of VA 53%, NVA 29% and 18% Waste, time to market can be shortened 18% or 47 days from early 262 days be 215 days.

Product architecture represents the structure of products or product families from different perspectives. By an explicit consideration of product architecture during the design process, the achievement of various design goals can be supported. For this, methodical approaches for product architecture design exist that focus, for instance, on modularization, platform development, or function integration. However, for designers and researchers, the variety of existing approaches causes the challenge to select and apply those approaches most suitable for specific situations in design. The aim of this thesis is to gain an overarching understanding of approaches for product architecture design. Therefore, existing approaches are analyzed regarding their contributions to different fields of design research, for instance, their proposed product models to represent product architecture and their design principles to improve the product architecture. In this way, the basis for a framework is elaborated that includes and expediently classifies the relevant knowledge from a variety of established approaches. To allow designers to access this knowledge, supports are developed that guide designers through the main activities regarding the consideration of product architecture. The application of the framework is demonstrated by case studies aiming at the conceptualization of product families and improving existing products by considering alternative product architectures. The results contribute towards both design practice and design research. On the one hand, the framework allows designers to gain a comprehensive understanding of product architecture design and enables them to select and apply approaches most appropriate for their individual design tasks. On the other hand, design research is enriched by an overarching concept of product architecture design allowing researchers to allocate own work in the context of others and elaborate new knowledge on the basis of already existing knowledge.

This paper reviews the academic literature on including lead users in developing new healthcare products. It underscores their pivotal role in fostering co-creation and innovation in the healthcare sector. Through a structured review following the PRISMA protocol, we identify and explore various dimensions of lead user engagement, including identification, role delineation, engagement methods, and the stages of new product development (NPD) in which they are involved. We also examine strategies for lead user recruitment and techniques for tracking and evaluating their contributions. Our findings have been synthesised into a framework for lead user involvement across different NPD stages. This framework is designed to enhance theoretical understanding and guide practical applications in healthcare innovation, offering a clear pathway for integrating lead user insights into product development processes. Additionally, based on our review, we extracted detailed guidelines on managing and leveraging lead user contributions to maximise the impact of healthcare innovation. This study advances theoretical knowledge and provides a practical tool that healthcare practitioners and innovators can directly apply. By bridging the gap between theoretical research and practical application, this paper offers a novel perspective that enriches our understanding of lead user dynamics and their essential role in healthcare NPD. The practical implications of our findings provide a clear pathway for integrating lead user insights into product development processes and detailed guidelines on managing and leveraging lead user contributions to maximise the impact of healthcare innovation.

The incorporation of tools into New Product Development (NPD) process tends to contribute to the implementation of Mass Customization strategy in companies. Different knowledge areas – such as marketing, design and engineering – offer tools for different stages of product development. The specificity of those tools makes their selection and application to NPD process difficult. This paper aims at carrying out a literature review of applicable tools in respect to the NPD aimed at MC promotion. It also aims at identifying, according to its objective, its localization and application to NPD process. By means of a systematic review, 39 tools for NPD were identified. The results present bibliometrics on the tools, identify four tool clusters according to their contributions to product development, and also identify opportunities for research about the theme.