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Productivity is among the most popular and useful measures to control a firm's performance. It is usually defined as a ratio between a firm's final outputs and its inputs. Such a definition for productivity does not allow an accurate assessment of those organizational units operating in the early stages of the new product development process, whose outputs are distant from a firm's final ones. This article focuses on the organizational units operating on product design and engineering activities, considered a key competitive advantage source. Indeed, such units oversee major responsibilities in developing new products and improving existing ones. Therefore, monitoring product design and engineering units’ productivity is of pivotal importance, especially for firms whose business model heavily relies on new or continuously improved products. However, research on the productivity of product design and engineering units has been underdeveloped, and previous studies have called for research on the topic. Hence, this article outlines the features of product design and engineering activities, describing their similarities and differences with respect to research and development activities and to service activities. Consequently, it presents methodological insights to assess product design and engineering productivity and their illustrative implementation in Leonardo SpA, a global company in the Aerospace and Defence sector. Finally, the article outlines the theoretical and managerial implications of the study.

Dissertação de mestrado em Engenharia de Produto, A proteção individual é um fator essencial para a diminuição da sinistralidade, reduzindo lesões e evitando a morte. Os bombeiros, como responsáveis pela prestação de socorro em diversas situações de emergência e de perigos, exercem atividades de alto risco, principalmente quando perante cenários de incêndios. Neste sentido, para que o trabalho seja realizado com disciplina e segurança necessitam de proteção especial para problemáticas específicas, devendo estar devidamente equipados, preparados e protegidos. Nestes casos, o investimento no desenvolvimento de novos produtos que supram as necessidades dos operacionais, assume um papel essencial fornecendo segurança e permitindo que os indivíduos executem as suas tarefas mais protegidas do que anteriormente. A proteção da cabeça é uma das principais preocupações. Considerada como uma das partes mais sensíveis do corpo, o capacete oferece proteção contra impactos externos, calor e perfurações. A presente dissertação apresenta o desenvolvimento de um produto inovador que contribuiu para a melhoria da proteção individual do bombeiro, integrando duas necessidades emergentes: a proteção e o conforto. O contributo do design e engenharia de produto para a proteção e bem-estar dos operacionais, tem como foco a melhoria de um dos seus principais equipamentos de proteção, respondendo às necessidades físicas, cognitivas e ambientais do utilizador. Este contributo passa por otimizar, potencializar, e valorizar o capacete, proporcionando uma melhor experiência de utilização em teatro de operações, combatendo e suprindo as necessidades mais evidenciadas., Personal protection is an essential factor in reducing accidents, reducing injuries and preventing death. Firefighters, as responsible for various emergencies and hazards, perform high-risk activities, especially when found in fire scenarios. In this sense, for the work to be carried out with discipline and safety, they need special protection for specific problems, needing to be properly equipped, prepared and protected. In these cases, investment in the development of new products that meet the needs of operators assume an essential role in providing security and allowing individuals to perform their tasks more protected than before. Head protection is one of the main concerns, considered as one of the most sensitive parts of the body, the helmet offers protection against external impacts, heat and punctures. The present dissertation aims to develop a viable product that can contribute to the improvement of firefighters' personal protection, balancing two emerging needs: protection and comfort. The contribution of product design and engineering to the protection and well-being of operators is focused on improving one of its main protective equipment, responding to the physical, cognitive and environmental needs of the user. This contribution starts by optimizing, enhancing, and enhancing the helmet, providing a better user experience, combating and meeting the most evident needs.

Tratando de usar únicamente metodologías que minimicen el impacto de la subjetividad o la experiencia del diseñador, el presente proyecto comprende el diseño y desarrollo de un tocadiscos de uso vertical, diseñado para ser colgado en una pared en el ámbito doméstico. El principal objetivo de este proyecto es dar lugar a un producto innovador, funcional, acorde a la normativa vigente y objetivamente viable en cuanto a costes y fabricabilidad. El resultado de este desarrollo es un documento acabado y definido que puede ser entregado a una marca de empresa que ponga en marcha la producción y comercialización del tocadiscos de pared. El proyecto se lleva a cabo de forma cronológica, comenzando por un estudio preliminar de la situación actual del mercado y los productos existentes que sienta las bases para definir los requisitos y funcionalidades del tocadiscos a desarrollar. Dichos requisitos son el hilo conductor del proyecto y la guía para elaborar una propuesta de forma global, definiendo los aspectos formales y funcionales del producto, así como aquellos de carácter técnico o ingenieril. Para llevar a cabo este proceso se hace uso de técnicas y metodologías profesionales, usadas en la industria actual para obtener datos y soluciones de forma objetiva y universal. This project covers the design and development of a vertical use turntable, designed to be hung on a wall in the domestic environment while trying to use only methodologies that minimize the impact of the designer's experience or subjectivity The main goal of this project is to give rise to an innovative, functional product which is in accordance with the current regulations and objectively feasible in terms of costs and manufacturability. The result of this development is a finished and well-defined document that can be delivered to a company brand willing to start up the production and marketing of this wall-mounted turntable. The project is carried out chronologically, beginning with a preliminary research of the current market situation and existing products that can lay the foundations for the definition of the requirements and functionalities of the turntable to be developed. These requirements are the connecting line of the project and the guide to prepare a global proposal, defining the formal and functional aspects of the product, as well as those of a technical or engineering nature. To carry out this process, professional techniques and methodologies used in the current industry are employed to obtain data and solutions objectively and universally.

The management and controlling of product costs play an important role in the early stages of value creation, since 70 - 80 % final product costs are determined in product development and design processes. Traditionally, the focus in business practice is often on the organizational controlling unit that records the corresponding costs when they occur. In those, later phases of the product lifecycle, the possibilities of exerting influence are very limited. Consequently, an accurate estimation of costs in the early design phase is an important instrument to support strategic decisions in the product engineering process. An intelligent approach based on machine learning to support cost management in the early design stage is presented. In a real-world case study using wheel cost data from a large original equipment manufacturer (OEM) we investigate the performance of a cross-validated machine learning framework using a greedy sequential forward feature selection method for dimensionality reduction, as well as grid search hyperparameter tuning in order to compare six regression algorithms. The results of the study show that it is possible to predict the costs of product components in the early design phase with an R2 of 0.960 using only seven features coming from the product design and development department. By a cluster analysis and scatter plots of prediction accuracies it is shown where the deviations in cost estimation come from. The study supports the statement that machine learning models are a promising instrument for product managers and cost engineers.

Shorter product life cycles and high product variance nowadays require efficient engineering of products and production systems. Hereby a further challenge is that costs over the entire life cycle of the product and production system are defined early in the process. Existing approaches in literature and practice such as simultaneous engineering and design for manufacturing incorporate aspects of production into product engineering. However, these approaches leave potential for increasing efficiency unused because knowledge from past generations of products, production systems, and business models is not stored and reused in a formalized way and future generations are not considered in the respective current engineering process. This article proposes an approach for integrated product and production engineering across generations and life cycles of products and production systems. This includes the consideration of related business models to successfully establish the products on the market as well as the anticipation of future product and production system characteristics. The presented approach can reduce both development and manufacturing costs as well as time to market and opens the vast technological potential for product design to achieve additional customer benefits. Three case studies elaborate on aspects of the proposed approach and present its benefits.

Product modularity can be considered as a product design strategy. It provides many benefits for companies that adapt it. However, there is little empirical evidence to support such an expectation. This study aims to measure the effects of product modularity on the efficiency and productivity of the product engineering area of a bus manufacturer. To reach the proposed objective, a longitudinal case study was conducted on the product engineering department of a company covering a period of three consecutive years. We used Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) combined with Mann–Whitney U test and Malmquist index. The results show an increase of 18.40% in the efficiency indexes of the company’s products engineering. In addition, positive changes can be observed, that is, there was a 63.50% increase in Total Factor Productivity Index (TFPI). The improvements are attributed to the implementation of product modularity in the organization under study. In this sense, the main contribution of this paper to the field is to present the increment of productivity with the insertion of the product modularity in the product engineering in a bus manufacturing company. Thus, product modularity can be considered a technology that increases the Total Factor Productivity Index (TPFI) of the companies that use it.

In order to describe the uncertain relationship between evaluation indicators of product and evaluate the product solution dynamically and rapidly, a dynamic evaluation method based on Bayesian network is proposed. First, we establish and analyze the evaluation indicators of design solutions, and build a Bayesian network model; second, the parameters of the Bayesian network are calculated by expert experience or maximum likelihood estimation in different application environments; then the indicators that have the highest influence on product evaluation are computed based on the sensitivity analysis in order to obtain the improvement direction of product design. Finally, the proposed method is verified by the example of a subway vehicle traction motor.

To successfully facilitate user-centred design, a multitude of different aspects has to be considered, from purely physiological to psychological-emotional factors. The overall aim is to increase the customer satisfaction by enhancing the fit between products and their users in the respective context of use. Further virtualisation of user-centred design processes holds the potential to convey the concepts of frontloading and predictive engineering from classical product engineering. Our vision is to facilitate a comprehensive consideration of user-product interactions in virtual product engineering operationalised by the mission to develop methods and tools to assess and design user-product interactions according to physiological and psychological aspects. A variety of work has already been done to model musculoskeletal user groups, to configure, predict, simulate and optimise physical user-product interactions, to integrate such models into CAD or to map individual subjective values to product design. Nevertheless, there are still research areas to be addressed to enable a comprehensive implementation of the mentioned approach. These are discussed in the present contribution.

Owing to the increasing concerns about customer needs in the current competitive market, the identification and incorporation of customer requirements (CRs) into product configuration designs have raised the interest of both researchers and practitioners. Most of the design methodologies focus on explicit technical domains to define CRs into specific design parameters directly. However, the CRs are so complicated that they are usually expressed in vague, ambiguous language containing uncertain information and are not in the form of well-defined specifications of product attributes and components. Kano’s model provides a qualitative way to classify CRs accurately. However, research contributions are seldom found in terms of quantitatively integrating Kano’s model with product designs. This paper identifies a novel approach based on the quantification of Kano’s model for integrating CRs into product engineering characteristics. Kano’s model is quantified by identifying the relationships between the CRs and customer satisfaction to link the requirements mapping phase and product configuration design phase. The quantitative results derived from Kano’s model are formulated as the multi-objective functions in a mixed non-linear programming model to identify the product configuration solution. For illustrative purposes, an example associated with the configuration design of a material-forming configuration production line is presented to demonstrate the capability of the proposed model.

The year 2021 is the first year of China’s 14th Five-Year Plan, and the year when the country will vigorously develop its independent core technologies attack. The national development strategy has put forward new demands on talent cultivation, and the cultivation of the ability to solve complex problems will certainly be further deepened in the graduation requirements of undergraduates. This paper taking the commercial product engineering thinking path as a clue and the “Von Neumann structure computer model machine” product as an example, the Product Canvas is used to simulate the planning process of products at the beginning of complex engineering problems, and the V model is used to simulate the product design and implementation process of complex engineering problems, so as to reconstruct the teaching content of Principles of Computer Organization course, with a view to deepening the requirements of cultivating college students’ ability to solve complex problems.

1.2 What are the main phases of product design and development Before discuss the collaboration issues for product design and development, we need to briefly review the phases of product design and development. The major phases of product design and development are normally defined as conceptual design, preliminary design, and detail design and development (Blanchard, 2004). During the conceptual design phase, the concepts, which are also called scheme, are built in order to completely and efficiently design the transceiver. The concepts may include such as product operational requirements and maintenance, current product problem (or deficiency), functional analysis for the product, applicable technical performance measures (TPMs), and specific performance measures and design-to criteria. Preliminary design phase begins with a “functional baseline” product configuration described in the product specification prepared during conceptual design phase. The functional baseline is translated into detailed qualitative and quantitative design requirements for allocating applicable elements of the product. An “allocated baseline” configuration in the form of development, product, and process specifications is established during this phase. At the beginning of detail design and

Dominating markets with a single product is increasingly difficult, and instead numerous industries are evolving towards mass customization, meaning the production of individually customized and highly varied products or services (Pine, 1993). This proliferation of models allows consumers to find a product that best suits their individual needs. The need for increasing product variety and shorter development time brings more complexity to the company than ever. Corporations are striving to bala nce customer satisfaction and cost savings, and product design is becoming essential for accomplishing this. Since developing an entirely different product is often uneconomical. A better method is to develop a product architecture that enables a company to offer highly differentiated products that share a substantial fraction of their components. Therefore, introducing product variety within a robust architecture offers one means of enhancing mass customization. Besides, an increase in product variety brings an increase in the volume of information exchanged between customers, designers and marketing department. Due to such increased information processing load, information technology is needed to tackle this problem. This chapter investigates the product variety design methodologies through the computational design optimization methods, and developing product architecture under the support of information technologies. It aims at providing product designers a rational and systematic methodology in dealing with product variety from both qualitative and quantitative viewpoints.

This Master’s thesis introduces and presents the term ‘Packaging Product Design’ which refers to a novel conceptual design approach in interdisciplinary design practices, integrating Packaging Design and Product Design. Packaging Product Design aims to provide an alternative sustainable design approach to reduce generated packaging material waste. This is possible by incorporating the packaging with its packed product to create an additional value in the form of a ‘packaging product’, lowering the probability of the packaging’s disposal. The research investigation begins with a literature review which addresses the sustainability awareness in Packaging and Product Design. The novelty of Packaging Product Design is proven through the scarcely documented existence and implementation of an integrated approach towards the two fields under research. This gap is addressed through Packaging Product Design. The research continues with an embedded single-case study, which is derived from a methodical triangulation of the following: secondary research, survey and visual analysis. Through an exhaustive search in contemporary design developments, qualifying packaging products could be detected and identified. These identified packaging products were then thoroughly analysed to determine their characteristics, distinctive qualities and approaches. These analyses helped to create a feasible conceptual framework incorporating essential form specific and function specific approaches, together with assessment criteria, formulated to guide and evaluate the sustainable approach of Packaging Product Design. To corroborate its feasibility, a conceptual packaging product prototype is then developed in the form of a smartphone docking station, following the introduced framework and established assessment criteria. Packaging Product Design contributes as a new viable sustainable alternative to current design practices in Packaging and Product Design, while enabling an interdisciplinary and exciting design approach for product and packaging designers alike. This approach will hopefully also inspire further, out-of-the-box sustainable interdisciplinary approaches and solutions, to solve the crucial global issue of manmade waste and contribute to a better world. ​Master of Arts

In this paper an extension of the design method graph-based design languages is proposed. This is realized by adding object-oriented class methods and interface mechanisms to the design method. Additionally, graphical mechanisms for modeling and calling the methods are proposed. This allows object-oriented design patterns to be transferred to the product design, where they improve the handling of complexity in the product engineering. As result, the proposed extension enables modularization and reuse of engineering knowledge, the integration of engineering domains is enhanced and multi-stakeholder collaboration with security access control (information security) becomes feasible.

Digital twins offer great opportunities in various domains of the product engineering process. However, current approaches to the use of digital twins only focus on different separated disciplines. In contrast to that, it is expected that the holistic use of digital twin models in product development and production will dominate future product generations, because they allow to create high-performance products competitively. This paper explores important challenges and future potentials of digital twins and Industry 4.0 for the seamless integration of product specification and production. In this regard, approaches of linking digital twins to other domains open up new possibilities in tolerance allocation and production integration. Thereby, the most efficient product specifications in technical and economic terms are achieved for the manufacturer. In addition, the connectivity of Industry 4.0 broadens the scope and enables the evaluation of alternative approaches in production planning and control. Approaches at the organizational level, product functions with specifications beyond the technological limits and production control strategies (e.g. order dispatching) ensure high performance operations. Simulations with a digital production twin with integrated digital product twin allow early estimations even before the actual ramp-up of the product. The future challenge addressed in this paper is to define a consistent framework for the holistic use of digital twins in the entire product development process, which requires the integration of product designers and production planner concepts.

Transport phenomena is proposed as the second paradigm as a consequence of the inadequacy of the unit operations field for solving process and product engineering problems. The appearance of Bird’s transport phenomena textbook put transport phenomena as an engineering science along with thermodynamics for chemical engineers. Even though this field provides some important fundamentals to solve upcoming undergraduate problems, we have found that students constantly perceive this field as abstract and difficult to apply due to the fashion in which the problems are posed, the mathematics involved, and the three-dimensional view required to understand the phenomena. Chemical product design on the other hand represents the fourth paradigm which has permitted the evolution of the formation of the engineer to a more market-oriented design, so the student becomes more aware of the impact of his design. Here, we show how everyday life product design has facilitated the understanding of the fundamental concepts in transport phenomena for the student using active learning methodologies centered on evaluation of market needs.

[PT] O desenho é uma atividade na qual são definidos os aspectos formais e a aparência do produto. A correta concreção para a definição das características do produto e sua posterior implantação nele são de vital importância para o sucesso empresarial. Esta pesquisa se foca na possibilidade de agrupar características nas dimensões habituais para a definição formal do produto, de acordo com as demandas do mercado e dos que participam do processo de desenho. A pesquisa, de tipo exploratório, identifica e classifica agrupações de características utilizadas na fase de desenho inicial. Aplicou-se um questionário a estudantes de Desenho Industrial e de Engenharia de Produtos da Espanha, do Chile e do México, a partir de uma lista de características propostas por especialistas. Aplica-se uma análise fatorial para reduzir as variáveis do estudo, identificando-se três componentes principais relacionados com as características fundamentais de desenho denominados utilitárias, de aparência e perceptivas. O estudo evidencia o uso de linguagem comum entre a área do desenho e a da engenharia no momento de determinar as características para dar forma ao produto. Observa-se uma clara aproximação quanto à compreensão da definição do produto associada ao consumidor, cumprindo com os objetivos empresariais propostos no briefing, [FR] La conception est une activité dans laquelle sont définis les aspects formels et l¿apparence du produit. La concrétisation correcte pour la définition des caractéristiques attribuées au produit et son ultérieure mise en œuvre sont d¿une importance capitale pour la réussite de l¿entreprise. Cette recherche se concentre sur la possibilité de regrouper les attributs dans les dimensions habituelles pour la définition formelle du produit, en fonction des exigences du marché et de ceux qui participent au processus de conception. La recherche exploratoire identifie et classe les groupes d¿attributs utilisés dans la phase de conception initiale. On a appliqué un questionnaire aux étudiants en conception industrielle et en génie des produits en Espagne, au Chili et au Mexique, sur la base d¿une liste d¿attributs proposés par des spécialistes. On a appliqué une analyse factorielle pour réduire les variables de l¿étude, en identifiant trois composantes principales liées aux attributs de conception fondamentaux appelés utilitaires, d¿apparence et de perception. La recherche démontre l¿utilisation d¿un langage commun entre le domaine de la conception et de l¿ingénierie lors de la détermination des attributs pour façonner le produit. Il y a un rapprochement clair en termes de compréhension de la définition du produit associée au consommateur, en parvenant à une plus grande conformité avec les objectifs commerciaux proposés dans le briefing, [EN] Design is an activity where products¿ formal aspects and appearance are defined. The appropriate specification for the definition of a product¿s attributes and their subsequent implementation are of paramount importance for business success. In line with the demands of the market and those who participate in the design process, this research focuses on the possibility of grouping attributes in the usual dimensions for the formal definition of a product. Following an exploratory research approach, this study identifies and classifies groups of attributes used during the initial design stage. A questionnaire was applied to Industrial Design and Product Engineering students in Spain, Chile and Mexico, based on a list of attributes proposed by specialists in the subject. A factor analysis is applied to reduce the variables of the study, identifying three main components related to the fundamental design attributes: utilitarian, appearance and perceptual. This research proves the use of a common language between the areas of design and engineering when determining the attributes for giving shape to the product, showing a clear approach in understanding the definition of the product in relation to the consumer which makes possible to achieve greater compliance of the business objectives proposed in the briefing., [ES] El diseño es una actividad en la que se definen los aspectos formales y la apariencia del producto. La correcta concreción para la definición de los atributos que se atribuyen al producto y su posterior implementación en él son de vital importancia para el éxito empresarial. Esta investigación se enfoca en la posibilidad de agrupar atributos en las dimensiones habituales para la definición formal del producto, en concordancia con las demandas del mercado y de quienes participan del proceso de diseño. La investigación de tipo exploratoria identifica y clasifica agrupaciones de atributos utilizados en la fase de diseño inicial. Se aplicó un cuestionario a estudiantes de Diseño Industrial e Ingeniería de Productos de España, Chile y México, a partir de un listado de atributos propuestos por especialistas. Se aplica un análisis factorial para reducir las variables del estudio, identificándose tres componentes principales relacionados con los atributos fundamentales de diseño denominados utilitarios, de apariencia y perceptivos. La investigación evidencia el uso de un lenguaje común entre el área del diseño y la ingeniería al momento de determinar los atributos para dar forma al producto. Se observa un claro acercamiento en cuanto a la comprensión de la definición del producto asociada al consumidor, logrando un mayor cumplimiento de los objetivos empresariales propuestos en el briefing.

This paper aims at evaluating and suggesting a Simultaneous Engineering tool or Concurrent Engineering for integration between product design and production areas, aiming to make companies more competitive regarding product quality, costs and deadlines; through the development and application of a methodology to integrate the project with production, taking into account the difficulty of communication between who designs and who produces because of the complexity of the companies to gather multifunctional teams. Reduced time in product development process, higher product quality, lower cost in manufacturing process and fulfilment of customers’ requirements are the key factors to determine the success of a company. To produce excellent products, the concept of Concurrent Engineering must be implemented. Concurrent Engineering is a systematic approach which can be achieved when all design activities are integrated and executed in a parallel manner. The article presents a case study where a tool is applied for a preliminary analysis of the project before the beginning of the production phase and indicates a significant reduction in the number of technical changes and in the term to process the change of the product, since the project becomes more mature from the early stages.

Changing from physical prototype–based product design to computational (virtual) prototype–based product design requires more than leading edge computational engineering codes, joint R&D efforts with a Department of Energy Laboratory, brilliant and dedicated researchers, and meticulous verification, validation, and uncertainty quantification. For the most difficult engineering design problems, most of these are necessary but not sufficient. In every case, the designers, engineers, scientists, and their management must also believe that the benefits in time savings and more creative new products justify the cost and risk of conversion. In the extreme case, an impending crisis may force conversion even in the face of strong resistance. The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company’s experience illustrates a successful, crisis-driven transition to virtual prototype–based product design.

Cradle to grave product support has been a key issue in the engineering sector over many years, particularly because product engineering legacy knowledge is often lost during the product development process unless rigorously captured in some way. This is particularly the case during formal design reviews at any point during a product's lifecycle where engineering changes are not fully documented or where salient but important aspects of decision making are difficult to document explicitly. Though many software systems are available to support design reviews, they have not necessarily met the expectations of industry. Consequently, traditional knowledge capture methods tend to be time-consuming, costly and disruptive leading to many companies simply giving up on this crucial aspect of product development. This paper presents research carried out with regard to prototyping and testing a potential knowledge engineering capture and reuse solution, demonstrating real-time user-logging using virtual design environments focused on team-based design ‘reviews’. Called the Virtual Aided Design Engineering Review (VADER) system, it provides millisecond precision time-phased knowledge capture in an automatic and unobtrusive manner. Both structured and unstructured data are synthesised via a ubiquitous integration and temporal synchronisation (UbiITS) framework that enables interactive information mapping, retrieval and mining. VADER's frontend includes a virtual reality based 3D model view display as a multiuser collaborative interface and an auxiliary web interface for concurrent access by multiple distributed users during product design discussions. Feedback from engineers using the system demonstrated that this concept is one which believe would substantially enhance their engineering task knowledge capture, rapid retrieval and reuse capability. It was also surmised that, if required, such a system can be extended throughout the whole product development process capturing individual and team-based engineers’ inputs across the whole cradle-to-grave product life cycle. Also, due to its generic nature, this approach is not limited only to engineering applications or virtual environments but can potentially be used in other sectors using computer-based technologies of any kind.

User Experience (UX) has been employed for new product development, yet few systematic approaches have been developed. This study aims to propose a systematic approach, namely, User-experience-based design of experiments (UXDOE) to capture user response and filter design ideas to derive new product design directions. Two empirical studies were conducted with the collaboration of a world leading electronics manufacturing services (EMS) company. The derived results can support the confirmation of the target segments from the perspective of marketing and clarifying key factors. Based on UXDOE, this study investigated the influence of UX on 14 notebook prototypes and wearable product design practices. The results of empirical studies have shown practical viability of the proposed approach. This study filters design ideas of esthetics and indicate several key factors of the products that enables better understanding of UX and preferences across different segments and their evaluation toward various pro...

A large number of methods have been developed in order to systematically consider sustainability as a design criterion in the product development process. However, further support is required to help product development teams to assess the applicability of the existing methods in the specific design contexts. In order to address this problem, the Design Decision Support Assistant (DDSA)—an IT-based assistance system—has been developed to support product development teams in the selection, scheduling, and application of sustainable product design methods in the product development process. The backbone of the assistant is a method repository comprising 29 methods for sustainable product development as well as a method taxonomy to enable the selection and scheduling of suitable methods for achieving sustainability-related design targets. This article introduces the concept of the DDSA, details its practical prototypical implementation, and illustrates its application in a case study.

In current competitive times, product manufacturers need not only to retain their existing customer base, but also to increase their market share. One way they can achieve this is by generating new ideas and developing novel products with new features. As highlighted in the literature, in generating new ideas to develop novel and innovative products, it is important that product designers satisfy the needs of both current customers and new customers. However, despite the large number of existing studies that identify novel features in the ideation phase, product designers do not have a systematic framework that utilises additional information relating to products from either far-field or related domains to generate such new ideas in the ideation phase. This paper presents our proposed framework FEATURE which provides just such a systemic framework for product designers in the ideation phase of new product development. FEATURE has three phases. The first phase identifies and recommends to the product designers novel features that can be added to the next version of a reference product. In order to incorporate the customer's voice into the ideation phase, the second phase ascertains the popularity of the proposed features by using social media. The third phase ranks the proposed features based on the designer's decision criteria to select those that should be considered further in the next phases of new product development. We explain the importance of each phase of FEATURE and show the working of its first module in detail.

© 2017 Elsevier Ltd Improving structural performance of products is often realized by introducing increasingly advanced and complex materials as well as material combinations. What material to use in products is decided in the early product development phases and has a decisive impact for manufacturing, maintenance and end-of-life. A particular challenge is that the decisions need to be made upfront, where information of the forthcoming product is limited. This paper presents an early product development method to assess the criticality of alloy materials from a resource availability- and sustainability perspective. The method distinguishes itself from previous studies that focus on element criticality on a country level. The method is used to characterize and analyze the criticality of alloys in a three-step process that aims to support product design teams selecting what material alloy to use in early phases of design. It provides a proactive and systematic approach related to critical materials to avoid potential future problems on a long-term basis. The method presented has been developed in an action research-based approach in an aerospace company where a product design team validated and evaluated the material criticality method. The generic nature of the method is likely to be applicable not only to aerospace companies but also to other industries using advanced alloys. An important finding from applying the method in the company case was the clear link between long term business impact and sustainability performance.

Nowadays, the society is paying more and more attention to the issues that plague the environment. There is a growing need for enterprises to design and manufacture environmentally friendly products, in order to take up the responsibility of sustainable development of the society. The entire product life cycle consists of design, manufacturing, usage and recycling phases. These phases involve various economic and environmental factors that affect the recyclability of products. Previous researchers mainly focused on the single phase of the product’s life cycle. Moreover, they did not take into account the dynamic change of the recyclable material’s cost. In this paper, a time-series forecasting methodology is proposed to evaluate the product’s recyclability at the product design phase. It considers various economic and environmental factors of different stages of the product’s life cycle. In addition, a time-series forecasting method is utilised for predicting the cost of the recycled material at the produ...

Given that there are more non-value-added parts of product development process for technological innovation in enterprises. This research puts forward and applies the product development value stream technology on the basis of the theory for traditional value stream. Then the paper takes a case about product development of a manufacturing enterprise to analyze the whole process of product development from product planning, preliminary design, detailed design, and prototype test to put in production. According to analyze, we find the waste stages in the development and optimizing the development process. According to the contrast between two figures of development value stream in current and future situation, we find that the optimizing method can help recognize effectively the waste in the process of product development, cut down the period of development, reduce R&D costs, improve product development efficiency, and satisfy clients’ needs.

World Design Organization re-defines the practice of industrial design as a "strategic problem solving process that is used to develop products, systems, services and experiences". Such an expansion of the field makes product an intangible thing that depends more on research and necessitates re-elaboration of education. Within this context, the focus of this study is the place of research in basic design education in industrial design. The study investigates basic design students' product development and research processes during 2015-2016 academic year. The so-called problem definitions reflects a transition from a defined product, to a product that the student defines and constructs. As the scale of construction expanded, the impact of research also expanded. Within the study, the students' approach to problem definitions are analysed with their final products and research processes.

Purpose The recent shift towards accommodating flexibility in manufacturing companies and the complexity resulting from product variety highlight the significance of flexible assembly systems and designing products for them. The purpose of this paper is to provide insight into the requirements of a flexible assembly system for product design from the assembly system’s standpoint. Design/methodology/approach To fulfil the purpose of the paper, a literature review and a case study were performed. The case study was conducted with an interactive research approach in a global market leader company within the heavy vehicle manufacturing industry. Findings The findings indicate that common assembly sequence, similar assembly interfaces, and common parts are the main requirements of a flexible assembly system for product design which reduce complexity and facilitate various flexibility dimensions. Accordingly, a model is proposed to broaden the understanding of these requirements from the assembly system’s standpoint. Research limitations/implications This study contributes to the overlapping research area of flexible assembly systems and product design. Practical implications The proposed model is largely based on practical data and clarifies the role of product design in facilitating flexibility in an assembly system. It can be used by assembly managers, assembly engineers, and product designers. Originality/value The key originality of this paper compared to the previous studies lies in presenting a novel assembly-oriented design model. The model enhances understanding of a flexible assembly system’s requirements for product design with regard to reducing complexity and managing variation in a flexible assembly system. These requirements can be applied to product design across various product families within a company’s product portfolio.

Product design undergoes various stages and each stage requires valid inputs to obtain the desired output(s). Many times, the inputs that are provided are inaccurate or uncertain. Further, the design of a new product normally starts with a limited knowledge and not properly defined targets to convert an idea or concept into a marketable product. The complex and dynamic nature of design leads to uncertainty, which makes taking the right decision critical. Thus, it is felt that there is a serious need to handle uncertainties during product design. This work analyses the sources of uncertainty that may creep in the product design process during different design stages. Besides, it also illustrates the taxonomy of uncertainty and the tools that might be used to mitigate the uncertainty during each design stage. The paper validates the approach with the help of a design example. It is felt that the designers may benefit from this work as they can identify what type of uncertainty may come upon during a particular stage of the design process, along with the tool that can be used to handle the uncertainty in an effective manner.

There is a trend toward increased customization of goods to satisfy a wide range of customers using product platforms. However, there is an erroneous notion that product platforms can only be used to provide economic viability in production thanks to the reuse of physical components among a family of products. Yet, this is a limited perception of the potential of a product platform. In this article, an object-oriented approach to support the development of product platforms is proposed to increase efficiency through reuse and flexibility of designs among a family of products. Two modes of the platform development process are addressed: platform preparation and platform execution. Platform preparation prescribes the methods needed to model platform objects, using enhanced function-means models and set-based concurrent engineering processes. During the platform execution process, sets of design alternatives can be configured concurrently throughout the conceptual, system, and detailed phases of the platform development. Three cases illustrate how the same approach may be used in different design scenarios: design space exploration and extension, supply-chain collaboration, and configure-to-order. The approach supports system architects and design engineers in making design decisions that propel the platform development work by enabling analysis in stages where designs are immature and evaluating the goodness of the alternatives early. Ultimately, product platforms can be efficiently developed for modularity and scalability to find feasible product variants and meet the needs of a multitude of customers.

Purpose This paper aims to examine the perceptions of good design attributes and propose a model to estimate their relative importance through fundamental drivers. Design activities must understand and meet customer and producer expectations and deliver products in a profitable manner. Requirements analysis is conducted to understand customer expectations, but in new product development, this information can be available too late in the development cycle. Moreover, customer needs are often unclear to designers at early stages of design, with customers often unable to articulate their requirements or unaware of how a new product may solve problems or create complications. Evaluating non-product-specific drivers to generalized good product design attributes can help designers estimate important factors in early requirements analysis. Design/methodology/approach Quantification of the weight designers place in their mental models of what makes up a good product is determined from linear regression modeling, providing a more concrete evaluation of inherently subjective perceptions. A survey is deployed using Mechanical TurkTM to collect perceptions of good product attributes and drivers through product case studies. Data are analyzed using a utility theory framework and importance of attributes is estimated from the importance of drivers. Findings A generalized model that estimates good design attributes from drivers is presented. This study also demonstrates that non-product-specific attribute importance can be extracted from specific product cases. An application example demonstrating the relative importance of good design attributes is given for different types of watches. Research limitations/implications The approach is intended to supplement ordinary product design and development processes, and is not intended to replace market research and concept testing activities. Model coefficient weights are dependent on the quality of the data that was collected, which has limitations. While the current study included confounding variables, introducing interactions into the model could make attribute importance prediction more accurate. Practical implications While design requirements analysis is now central to modern design practice, these estimates can be available too late in the development cycle, especially when customers have no experience with the product type. The developed model quantifies design attributes that consumers, manufacturers and society as a whole use to distinguish if a product will be considered well designed. Product designers can better focus their development resources toward good design attributes based on guidance generated from generalized drivers. Originality/value Historically, requirements analysis is undertaken specific to the product being designed. This paper provides a model to give designers early guidance in a non-product-specific framework. The framework also considers good design attributes as holistic, including societal and producer concerns. Although all of the proposed good design attributes can be associated with a well-engineered product, it is unnecessary to design a product that performs exceptionally on every attribute. This model provides identification of the handful of attributes that can make the most significant difference for design success.

Purpose With the customers’ increasing expectation on the product value, manufacturing enterprises around the world have made significant efforts to provide high value-added services in addition to their traditional product development and manufacturing business. For this reason, it is of great importance to research product service system. The purpose of this paper is to research on the key problem of integrated product service system (IPSS) design. Design/methodology/approach A value-oriented IPSS is developed, which is set up based on “requirements-functions-processes-structures” mapping model to give full consideration to customer value and service functions. An extended product-service blueprint, which stems from the service blueprint, is developed to describe product behaviors, service deliver processes, stakeholders’ activities and supporting activities. An ontology-based design support system is proposed to improve design efficiency and help designers making better-informed decisions. A computer-aided prototype system has been developed, and an initial attempt has been made to demonstrate the role of IPSS in the aerospace industry. Findings Many traditional design methods cannot effectively address the objects and processes integration problem of products and services. Moreover, both product and service should be considered in IPSS design, and both of them extremely depend on designers’ own experience and knowledge. Thus, a broader range of knowledge is required to understand product-service system (PSS) design. Research limitations/implications This research provides a solid foundation for PSS C and promotes an effective means for PSS design. Originality/value A customer value-oriented IPSS is presented. Customer requirements are considered during the design phase of PSS as well as both product and service knowledge.

Nowadays, the success of a company is dependent to the novelty of the company in developing new items. Product design and engineering are a basic phase in developing new commodities which examines the product economically and technologically. In the proposed study, “Trust” is identified as an effective factor on the life cycle of the new designed product. This study addresses a simulation structure to generate all the possible trust modes between two agents over time and implements four prediction methods to forecast the trust value of the new item. The time horizon is considered to be short term and middle term, and 27 and 108 scenarios are designed, respectively, based on three categories involving high, medium and short trust. Here, three prediction techniques: conventional time series, artificial neural networks and adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system, are recommended and compared. By comparing MAPEs of all prediction methods, the best technique is identified.

The purpose of this research is to facilitate original equipment manufacturers operating in a single market segment to frame their product line design strategy that pertains to offering right product attributes with right attribute level in the right product profile within a market segment. Through this research, we attempt to establish a link between functional level design of product attributes with commercial objectives of the enterprise. Initially, by deriving the functional importance of product attribute levels of individual product attributes within a product profile, demand and functional importance data are generated. Utilising the function-based cost estimating framework and multi-linear regression methodology, we determine the cost and product development time coefficients for respective product attributes. Finally, a mixed integer quadratic programming-based mathematical formulation is developed that includes maximisation of product premium and minimisation of various costs as major objectives...

Product configuration system, as an effective tool to bridge the gap between customer requirements and product offerings, enables customer-centric product development in a cost-efficient way. Despite its advantages, however, most existing product configurators are centralized, i.e. the configuration process is conducted in a single company within its own product family. It cannot fulfill the ever increasing tendency towards personalization. This is because customers no longer have to choose from the limited options within the company’s solution space in a “configure-to-order” (CTO) model, they also propose or even create their individualized design in an “engineer-to-order” (ETO) model. Moreover, companies, especially large ones, are not willing to invest much into the niche market to produce the highly personalized components. To solve this problem, an open architecture product platform with adaptable interface can be adopted to integrate the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) with various vendors into a co-creation process. This paper proposes a conceptual framework of a personalized product configuration system based on the adaptable open architecture product platform. The technical configurator is enabled by a two-stage process (i.e. modular design and scalable design) to ensure the adaptability and scalability of product variety, while the sales configurator is established by considering each customer’s preferences and conducting the configuration process in an ETO manner. The technical details of the prototype system implementation are described and an illustrative example of a personalized bicycle configuration process is given to validate the overall framework.

Nowadays, along with the application of new-generation information technologies in industry and manufacturing, the big data-driven manufacturing era is coming. However, although various big data in the entire product lifecycle, including product design, manufacturing, and service, can be obtained, it can be found that the current research on product lifecycle data mainly focuses on physical products rather than virtual models. Besides, due to the lack of convergence between product physical and virtual space, the data in product lifecycle is isolated, fragmented, and stagnant, which is useless for manufacturing enterprises. These problems lead to low level of efficiency, intelligence, sustainability in product design, manufacturing, and service phases. However, physical product data, virtual product data, and connected data that tie physical and virtual product are needed to support product design, manufacturing, and service. Therefore, how to generate and use converged cyber-physical data to better serve product lifecycle, so as to drive product design, manufacturing, and service to be more efficient, smart, and sustainable, is emphasized and investigated based on our previous study on big data in product lifecycle management. In this paper, a new method for product design, manufacturing, and service driven by digital twin is proposed. The detailed application methods and frameworks of digital twin-driven product design, manufacturing, and service are investigated. Furthermore, three cases are given to illustrate the future applications of digital twin in the three phases of a product respectively.

Product line planning (PLP) aims at an optimal combination of product feature offerings, suggesting itself to be a determinant decision for a company to satisfy diverse customer needs and gain competitive advantages. Fulfilment of planned product lines must make trade-offs between product variety and production costs. To balance the costs of product lines, manufacturers often adopt a product platform configuration (PPC) approach to redesign product and process platforms by adding new modules to the legacy platforms. The PPC is an effective means of providing product variety while controlling the manufacturing costs. The PLP and PPC problems have traditionally been investigated separately in the marketing research and engineering design fields. It is important to coordinate PLP and PPC decisions within a coherent optimisation framework. This paper proposes a bilevel mixed 0–1 nonlinear programming model to formulate coordinated optimisation for platform-driven product line planning. The upper level deals w...

Within product development processes, computational models are used with increasing frequency. However, the use of those methods is often restricted to the area of focus, where product design, manufacturing process, and process chain simulations are regarded independently. In the use case of multi-material lightweight structures, the desired products have to meet several requirements regarding structural performance, weight, costs, and environment. Hence, manufacturing-related effects on the product as well as on costs and environment have to be considered in very early phases of the product development process in order to provide a computational concept that supports concurrent engineering. In this contribution, we present an integrated computational concept that includes product engineering and production engineering. In a multi-scale framework, it combines detailed finite element analyses of products and their related production process with process chain and factory simulations. Including surrogate models based on machine learning, a fast evaluation of production impacts and requirements can be realized. The proposed integrated computational product and production engineering concept is demonstrated in a use case study on the manufacturing of a multi-material structure. Within this study, a sheet metal forming process in combination with an injection molding process of short fiber reinforced plastics is investigated. Different sets of process parameters are evaluated virtually in terms of resulting structural properties, cycle times, and environmental impacts.