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The increasing product complexity and the continuous need of improving product quality and services force companies to join into distributed and extended networks. Collaborative product development triggers research toward the development of new methods and tools to manage virtual teamwork to reduce time to market. In this context, the paper proposes a novel approach and a supporting co-design platform to manage interrelations across organisations. Experimentations into four product design chains show improvements in communication, information sharing, knowledge distribution, time saving and easiness of team management. They demonstrate that collaborative product development can be usefully enhanced only if tools and procedures are designed for the specific needs of the virtual network.

In the context of aesthetic products, one of the most important research issues with regard to the definition of methods and tools is to preserve the initial design intent along the whole product development process. Starting from a novel definition of freeform aesthetic feature, the present research aims at outlining an innovative methodology for design intent recognition and formalisation in terms of styling curves and CAD modelling strategies. Their identification is based on the analysis of freehand sketches evolution during creative design. The final result consists in an innovative procedure for virtual prototyping that enables shape modifications coherently with the design intent. The main scientific contribution is the implementation of an approach to extract meaningful aesthetic and functional information from sketches and to translate them into an operational procedure for virtual prototyping by adopting semiotic-based rules and descriptive models of creative design. The achieved methodology has been applied to support both the reverse engineering of freeform shapes and the direct modelling of virtual mock-ups.

This paper proposes a method to drive process innovation toward the increase in efficiency of a production plant. The work defines a structured method, supported by a classification tool, to correctly organize whole plant information with a mayor focus on energy consumptions. The method was tested in a medium enterprise with the target to increase the efficiency of the entire production plant. The method is the basis for a web application tool. A correct data management permits to plan the best practices to improve processes and systems involved in terms of environmental and economic impacts, meaning a process sustainable innovation.

Steel constructions are widely used in several applications such as structures for buildings, stores, factories, and power plants. The scope of the research is to study a methodology to reduce the weight and the cost related to big frame steel structures during the early design phase, which is the phase where most of the project layout is defined. The main aim of this paper is the development of a platform-tool to support the automatic optimization of a steel structure using virtual prototyping tools and genetic algorithms. The focus is on the design of heavy steel structures for oil & gas power plants. This work describes in detail the design methodology and estimates the weight saving related to the re-design process of a test case structure. The design cases considered in the paper are those relevant to the operating.

The paper presents a lifecycle approach applied to the whole factory plant to characterize primary resource consumptions and environmental impacts for the different processes. The method is based on specific environmental models, defined for each process of a manufacturing plant. The goal is to provide a tangible support to guide decision-making strategies in order to move manufacturing towards sustainability. A case study of a washing machine factory plant has been analyzed to highlight the critical working areas in terms of environmental and energy loads and to support the identification of the corrective actions to increase the overall sustainability.

Nowadays, a large number of goods (e.g. appliances and electronic products) must be treated in dismantling centers after the conclusion of their lifecycle. Selective disassembly is necessary to accomplish environmental directives and to increase their sustainability. Dismantling centers developed internal non-standardized procedures to remove dangerous components and to minimize disassembly costs. The proposed approach aims to create a collection of the disassembly knowledge coming from dismantling centers as a repository for design actions oriented to End-of-Life. The final goal is to define a knowledge-based Design for Disassembly approach to support companies in designing products with improved disassemblability and maintainability.

Product-Service is a recent concept based on a novel product understanding consisting of integrated product and service shares. It represents a new trend for industries to innovate their artefacts and create fresh business opportunities. However, moving from product to services requires the identification of the needed assets to create the new solution and the integration of both product-related and service-related activities into a unique product-service lifecycle. In practice, such an evolution can be defined theoretically but it is hard to implement since supporting tools are strongly product-centred yet. As a consequence, product-service is still a fascinating idea especially in manufacturing sector. This paper tells about a success story of product-service management in manufacturing industry; it describes how a household appliances’ manufacturer shifted from traditional product lifecycle towards product-service lifecycle to manage the new service. The study starts from analysis of the AS-IS processes and mapping of the ecosystem tangible and intangible assets, and describes how the company was supported into the definition of an integrated product-service lifecycle.

Identifying theories and methods to link geometrica l tolerances specification and inspection processes is a widely spread researc h topic. The growing use of virtual product models which not only represent the geometry information, but also collect attributes, notes, parameters, rules and procedures , can facilitate the digital simulation of many real processes. In the present work we are interested in using such technologies for the purpose of simulating the inspection proces s of manufactured products. In particular, we propose an approach for virtual insp ection of geometrical tolerances based on a feature-based 3D CAD model coupled with a 3D points cloud data model. The 3D CAD model stores the tolerances specificati ons defined by the designer as well as the specification of the inspection methods. The points cloud model is a complete representation of the manufactured product and it i s defined by the digital acquisition of the real product. The acquisition phase is performe d with non-contact techniques to ensure high performances in terms of speed. The inf ormation stored in the CAD model is used to select and drive the different inspectio n procedures to be performed on the acquired data.

One of the most significant challenge of Virtual Reality (VR) in industry is to support the interaction with product models while enhancing the collaborative product development (CPD) by improving team working in the extended enterprise. The process success highly depends on how information flows and which representational means and supporting environments are adopted. This paper explores the impact of VR applications on collaboration focusing on co-design requirements, participants behavior and exploited interaction modalities. A benchmarking method is defined to select the proper co-design virtual environment for specific forms of collaboration carried out in different time-space domains. It adopts protocol analysis techniques to objectify both practical and cognitive human factors and it applies Quality Functional Deployment (QFD) matrices to correlate collaboration requirements and tools functionalities. Experimental tests have been carried out on synchronous and remote co-design activities, where VR tools have been poorly exploited. Achieved results highlight main limitations and strengths of the analysed technologies, addressing future developments in collaborative virtual environments.

Designing a new product, in most cases, means a modification of an existing one. Both adopting known solutions in different products, that inserting new technological processes into a consolidated context, the most design effort must be dedicated to the early evaluation of the impact of needed engineering changes to achieve the final result, in terms of cost, quality and time. Such activity is particularly strategic in the modular product development. The aim of our research work is to develop a method and the related tools that enable designers to easily represent the product platform, to structure the relations between modules defined at different levels of detail and, hence, to simulate, analyze and evaluate the modifications impact during the new product variant definition phase. A multi-level product structure able to represent the product informative content at different levels of detail is presented.

Machine design process requires the effective and rapid assessment of different design solutions. Beyond functions and technical performance other parameters as safety, manufacturability, assemblability etc. have to be taken into account. Manufacturing cost is one of the main factors in order to choose the most suitable solution, so accurate estimation in the early design phases is fundamental. Design to cost implies to manage a vast amount of manufacturing knowledge that has to be linked to the design parameters. Feature based 3D CAD models contain data useful for cost estimation but, despite the numerous researches on features recognition and extraction, no cost estimation software system yet assures reliable results. In such context, this paper presents an approach for rapid manufacturing cost estimation where design features are automatically linked to manufacturing operations. The approach has been implemented into a knowledge-based system and tested on practical case studies in order to validate the performance. Copyright © 2002-2012 The Design Society. All rights reserved.

International audience; Nowadays, industrial products, particularly household appliances, are strongly related to environmental issues. Due to high levels of uncertainty regarding design embodiments at the early design phase, new methods and tools are essential to provide designers a basis to determine the degree of sustainability of a given product. The paper aims to integrate ecodesign activities within the traditional flow of the product design process through the development of an integrated software platform which supports the decision-making task for product sustainability in the early phase of product design.

The market globalization pushes for ever new products in order to reach new niches. In the household appliances field, the marketing specialists daily configure new combinations of numerous functional and product requirements seeking new product definitions. Each novel combination requires an assessment of technical and economic feasibility by the design departments. This paper proposes a method for a preliminary validation of new configurations at the marketing stage. Indeed a tentative Bill of Materials (BOM) and a cost of the product are obtained. A knowledge base is derived by eliciting the requirement compatibilities from existing products. The approach is matrix based and it analyzes recurrent dependencies between requirements and components variants to determine which parts are most likely to appear in the BOM. Then, the knowledge base is integrated with rules that are input by experienced designers through a simple syntax. The approach has been tested moving from the requirements of some instances of a family of cookers, and comparing the results obtained from the application of the method with the actual product BOM.

Recently numerous companies are moving from products to services to create new business opportunities and increase the value perceived by the customers thanks to an extended value creation network. The research challenge is to support traditional manufacturing enterprises evaluating the shift from products to services as far as sustainability is concerned. While product sustainability can be assessed by several tools, the impacts of PSS (Product-Service Systems) are almost unexplored. This paper adopts a holistic approach to assess sustainability by estimating three main impacts: environmental, economical and social. The methodology is illustrated by means of an industrial case study focusing on washing machines; it analyses the traditional scenario based on tangible product selling with a vertical supply-chain, and an innovative PSS scenario proposing washing as a service within an extended network. Data comparison highlights the achievable benefits of PSS on sustainability.

As experience in EcoDesign increases, academic and industry thinking is moving towards the more advanced stages of EcoDesign; moving away from product improvement and product redesign into the more holistic approaches of Alternative Function Fulfilment (AFF) and system innovation. This paper investigates how modularity concept, applied to product design, allow much degrees of freedom for the designer, more possibility to reduce environmental impact related to product life-cycle and increase the interaction between LCA and the earlier stages of the (Eco)design process. A method, based on the product modularity concept, to increase LCA usability for the designers is proposed in this paper.

During past years several eco-design methodologies have been previously defined but none can be easily integrated in the traditional design process of manufacturing companies. This paper wants to overcome this lack and aims to define a methodology, called G.EN.ESI, to help also those designers without a specific know-how on eco-design, during the development of sustainable products. The methodology has been also contextualized in the traditional product design process, re-engineering this one with new input/output data, actors and specific tools, to demonstrate the applicability in real contexts. The re-engineered process is supported by a new set of integrated software tools, called G.EN.ESI platform. It is made of four tools for the definition of the product life cycle model, two tools for the evaluation of the environmental impact and Life Cycle Cost and a tool to guide the decision-making process during the re-design phase of a product. Furthermore, a web module to retrieve the necessary data from the supply chain subjects has been defined. Finally, the link with the CAD and PLM systems is proposed to increase the usability.

This paper describes various technological tools and e-learning resources used by the authors in their work as university teachers and communicators of mathematics to a general public. As pointed out by recent developments in mathematics education research, a technology enhanced teaching may have significant potentialities at tertiary level: e-learning is an essential support to overcome some logistic obstacles such as the large number of students per teacher, the small number of hours of lesson available, the heterogeneity of the freshmen’s mathematical background. Moreover, a fine design of digital environments can foster an engaging, inclusive, flexible and meaningful learning of mathematical topics. In this paper we give a perspective on some educational experiments carried out with engineering students of Universita Politecnica delle Marche through specific functionalities of the Moodle platform (quiz, forum, workshop) and the dynamic geometry software Geogebra. We also report shortly on our approach to the use of new technological devices in the dissemination of scientific knowledge to a broader audience.