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This paper describes a software tool called DRed (the D esign R ationale ed itor), that allows engineering designers to record their design rationale (DR) at the time of its generation and deliberation. DRed is one of many proposed derivatives of the venerable IBIS concept, but by contrast with other tools of this type, practicing designers appear surprisingly willing to use it. DRed allows the issues addressed, options considered, and associated arguments for and against, to be captured graphically. The software, despite still being essentially a research prototype, is already in use on high profile design projects in an international aerospace company, including the presentation of results of design work to external customers. The paper compares DRed with other IBIS-derived software tools, to explain how it addresses problems that seem to have made them unsuitable for routine use by designers. In addition to the capture and presentation of the DR itself, the set of linked DR graphs can be used to provide a map of the contents of an electronic Design Folder, containing all the documents created by an individual or team during a design project. The structure of the knowledge model instantiated in such a Design Folder is described. By reprising a design case study published at the DTM 2003 conference, concerning the design of a Mobile Arm Support (MAS), the DRed knowledge model is compared with the previously proposed Design Data Model (DDM), to show how it addresses the shortcomings identified in the DDM. Finally the methodology and results of the preliminary evaluation of the use of DRed by aerospace designers are presented.Copyright © 2004 by ASME

The industrial world is changing rapidly and engineering organisations need to adapt fast to remain in business. Some of the pressures faced by engineering managers include: (1) the trend towards globalisation and the reliance on IT; (2) the increasing commercial pressures which demand continual improvements in quality, shorter lead times and reduced costs; (3) the increasing complexity of both products and processes; (4) the problems of retaining and retrieving knowledge and experience; and (5) the need to move towards sustainable development.

Users react to products without knowing the intended Kansei integrated into them by the designer. Human beings are equipped with variable preference mechanism. It is argued that human attributes result from three different levels of brain mechanism: the visceral; the behavioural; and the reflective levels. This paper focuses upon the visceral level through the building of a link between geometric properties of non-functional 3D forms and the human perception of these by users. This link is created using a genetic algorithm combined with a fuzzy logic decision support system. Human evaluations of the non-functional 3D shapes against two contrary perception adjectives (massive and light) are used as the learning data set for the genetic algorithm. Eight fuzzy models were developed using different sets of quantitative geometric properties as inputs resulting into different sets of fuzzy design rules. Correlations as high as 99%, between fuzzy and human perception, were obtained.

This paper investigates the impacts companies have experienced as a result of globalising their product development process, and how they have been addressed. Data was collected through case studies of Danish multinational corporations. This paper presents a unique look into global product development through an investigation of its impact on the organisation, the product development process, and the product. Furthermore, it shows the solutions companies employ to minimise the risks of globalisation and the limitations of these solutions. Finally, this paper provides information on the likely causes for these limitations, and suggests how these can be addressed.

Increasingly engineering design research involves the use of empirical studies that are conducted within an industrial environment (Ahmed, 2001; Court, 1995; Hales, 1987). Research into the use of information by designers, or understanding how engineers build up experience are examples of research areas that often use methods such as interviews, observations and protocol analyses. These methods are traditionally associated with the social sciences, and usually with experiments set within a laboratory environment. The use of such methods in an industrial environment has created a new set of research issues. This paper describes empirical research methods employed in industry case studies focusing upon information, knowledge and experience in engineering design. The paper describes the methods, their suitability for the particular research aims, and the advantages and disadvantages of the methods, and describes two case studies in detail. The paper draws conclusions from the studies reviewed of the use of empirical research methods in industry.

Distributed teams are an increasingly common feature of New Product Development (NPD). Key to the success of these teams is the development of both short and longerterm shared understanding. Lack of shared understanding has been recognized as a significant challenge, particularly in the context globally distributed NPD activities. Poor shared understanding can ultimately result in delays and rework. One major antecedent of shared understanding development is question asking. This work uses a quasiexperimental study to test the impact of questioning support on different types of distributed teams, both homogeneous and heterogeneous. This extends theoretical insight into the development of shared understanding and contributes one of few empirical studies directly comparing the response characteristics of different team types. From a managerial perspective this work has implications for how distributed NPD teams can be more effectively supported, as well as how shared understanding development can be facilitated in the NPD process.

An organisation looking to form collaborations across borders is a consequence of an increasingly competitive world market. Recent studies highlighted key challenges and success factors organisation’s face when globalising stages of product development. To optimize performance along these factors there is a requirement for the process to be monitored and measured relative to the business strategy of an organisation. It was found that performance measurement is a process that helps achieve sustainable business success, encouraging a learning culture within organisations. To this day, much of the research into how performance is measured has focussed on the process of product development. However, exploration of performance measurement related to global product development is relatively unexplored and a need for further research is evident.This paper contributes towards understanding how performance is measured in global product development. More specifically, results from a survey and interviews highlight a need for further development in current performance measurement frameworks used in product development to facilitate the key factors and metrics in global product development.

An important aspect of artifact/product design is defining the aesthetic and emotional value. The success of a product is not only dependent on it’s functionality but also on the emotional value that it creates to its user. However, if several designers are faced with a task to create an object that would evoke a certain emotion (aggressive, soft, heavy, friendly, etc.) each would most likely interpret the emotion with a different set of geometric features and shapes. In this paper the authors propose an approach to formalize the relationship between geometric information of a 3D object and the intended emotion using fuzzy logic. To achieve this; 3D objects (shapes) created by design engineering students to match a set of words/emotions were analyzed. The authors identified geometric information as inputs of the fuzzy model and developed a set of fuzzy if/then rules to map the relationships between the fuzzy sets on each input premise and the output premise. In our case the output premise of the fuzzy logic model is the level of belonging to the design context (emotion). An evaluation of how users perceived the shapes was conducted to validate the fuzzy logic model and showed a high correlation between the fuzzy logic model and user perception.Copyright © 2008 by ASME

This empirical paper investigates the challenges global product development faces in regard to a sustainable utilization of resources through case studies and interviews in six Danish multinational corporations. Findings revealed 3 key challenges, which relates to increased rework in product development and production, overlapping work and a lack of utilization of knowledge and information at the supplier or subsidiary. The authors suggest the use of strategic simulation in order to gain greater transparency in the global network and thus utilize resources better. Strategic simulation is the combination of numerical and narrative simulation and can be used as a tool to support strategic decisions regarding different scenarios. The use of this method promotes an ongoing iterative process to constantly clarify points of uncertainty and enhance adaptability in order to promote a sustainable process.

Many engineering companies experience new challenges when globalising product development. Global product development (GPD) is a relatively nascent research area, and previous research reveals the need for decision support frameworks. This research investigates how decisions are made when companies outsource or offshore product development tasks, and how these decisions can be improved. A brief literature review on existing research on GPD and decision making is given, followed by two case studies, where implications of decisions are investigated. The findings point towards further studies required for creating a decision support framework for managers to make better decisions in the future.

Biocards are formal descriptions of biological phenomena and their underlying functional principles. They are used in bioinspired design to document search results and to communicate the findings for use in the further design process. The present study explored the effect of abstraction level used in biocards. This was done in two workshops conducted with design students in Denmark and India. Students were given a design assignment and instructions for how to perform the BID ideation work. Half of the students were given biocards with abstract descriptions while the other half got biocards with concrete descriptions. The novelty of found solutions was evaluated by the students by rating novelty of each solution on a scale from 1 to 5. Mean values for abstract descriptions were 0,3 higher than for concrete descriptions indicating that more innovative solutions were found when students used biocards with abstract descriptions compared to concrete descriptions. The difference in mean value is significant with a confidence level better than 1%. It seems likely that more abstract descriptions in biocards helps avoiding design fixation in biomimetic design work.

One of the motivations to develop a standard language to describe the functions of a product or artifact is to facilitate the indexing, search and retrieval of design knowledge. Taxonomies describing a standard language of functions have been developed by a number of researchers. This paper describes an empirical study carried out to evaluate two such taxonomies for their suitability to indexing design knowledge. The results of eighteen interviews conducted into two separate aerospace companies in the UK are presented. Engineering designers were asked to describe the function of assemblies or components that they were familiar with. In total, 207 descriptions of functions were collected. These descriptions have been analysed and compared to the two taxonomies evaluated. This paper describes the findings from these studies and draws conclusions on the suitability of these taxonomies for indexing design knowledge.Copyright © 2003 by ASME

This paper describes a study to understand the use of analogies by design engineers with different levels of experience. Protocol analyses of twelve design engineers have been analysed to understand the functions and reasoning of the analogies. The protocols are real world data from the aerospace industry. The findings indicate a significant difference in both the functions and reasoning by novices and experienced designers. Novices were found to predominantly transfer information without explicit reference to design issues, whereas experienced designers tended to either solve or identify problems. Experienced designers were found to reason about the function of a component and to some degree the predicted behaviour of the component, whereas the novices seem to lack such reasoning processes.Copyright © 2008 by ASME