Concurrent Engineering Approaches for Sustainable Product Development in a Multi-Disciplinary Environment

Concurrent Engineering has been a major theme in the 80 s and 90 s of the previous century in research and practice. Many advantages have been achieved in terms of cost and time reduction and quality improvement. While starting with a design-manufacturing alignment, gradually the CE way of thinking has been extended to incorporate more lifecycle functions together with a stronger focus on and involvement of both customer and supplier. In this paper a history of CE is sketched as well as its major achievements and challenges. Challenges are briefly described that exist in two application areas, aeronautics and agro-food.

It is pointed out that what concurrent engineering contributed to industry is that our knowledge is non-physical so that it can be shared. Although traditional concurrent engineering contributed very greatly in reducing time to market and reducing cost, it only paid attention to 1 dimension, i.e. time. But if we expand concurrent engineering into 2 dimensions, i.e. time and space, we can integrate many different industries into one and meet the basic expectations of our customers. And what is none the less important is that we could reduce energy considerably and build up a seamless and smart society. Thus, concurrent engineering tomorrow will contribute to the creation of a new lifestyle.

This paper looks at the number one online retailer, amazon.com and compares their assortment of goods in the areas the company gained ground in, namely the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, China, Canada, Italy and Spain. We consider the total number of products, the number of product categories, and the year, in which a category has been established in country as well as a GDP comparison and index comparison. Further, this paper offers help to e-commerce companies, which want to expand to other countries by offering a method to calculate reasonable price distributions for different countries. This has been achieved by comparing the percentage of number of products in price category to the median price over GDP per capita in the categories: watches, sports, books, software and music.

This article addresses the concepts of multidisciplinary projects focusing on the technological innovation recommended by the

R&D Program

of the

Agência Nacional de Energia Elétrica

(Brazilian Electricity Regulatory Agency)–

ANEEL

, under which are subject all the Brazilian electrical utilities through the federal law 9.991/2000. The

R&D Program

provides the directions for the electrical energy research and development offering the criteria for the elaboration of the proposals of researches projects. Until recently the product development processes were not part of the electrical utility routine, what it becomes clear that it was necessary more knowledge about the whole research and development process what has showed the lack of the adequate methodological methods. This work presents the main points of a new approach as well as the study of the product development tools applied in the elaboration of the projects proposals. Therefore it is expected that this new approach brings a better R&D projects quality and consequently a significant reduction of the time, development and reengineering costs.

The 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and associated tsunami destroyed cities along the Pacific coast of northeast Japan. Large areas, including the city centers, of many cities were completely destroyed. Recovery planning for those cities is one of the most important issues facing Japan. However, recovery plans should not merely rebuild the cities as they were before the disaster, but instead should attempt to add value to the cities. Our team created a conceptual recovery plan for a coastal community in Iwate Prefecture, Japan, introducing a photovoltaic (PV) power plant and storage battery system. Moreover, we proposed the optimal scale of the required PV power plant and energy storage system by using an energy management simulation. Finally, we demonstrated that a PV power plant with a battery storage system can supply the coastal community with electric power stably and can smooth the fluctuations in power supplied by a system power supplier.

This paper proposes an optimization method by milk-run logistics for designing ecological and economical procurement logistics systems for an e-commerce company, especially the case in which the trucks pick up goods at several suppliers and deliver them to a different logistics center where the trucks started. The method consists of two major processes; selection process and optimization process. The system optimizes the following factors of procurement logistics: The number of trucks, the suppliers’ depots each of the trucks picks up goods, and their order in which the truck travels. We conducted a case study for an existing Japanese e-commerce company, and demonstrated the effectiveness of the optimization system.

In this study, a simulator for the energy management system that utilizes both stationary batteries and the batteries of electric vehicles (EVs) is developed. With use of the simulator, the feasibility and effectiveness of such energy management system are investigated. The focus of this study is on the home-to-vehicle (H2V) system, in which the power flows from the house to the EV only but the flow is controlled so that the power from the grid is levelled (smart-charging). Feasibility studies are conducted for the energy management system of houses and apartments, to which PV panels, stationary batteries and an EV battery are introduced. From the simulation results, it is inferred that the effectiveness of smart-charging is limited at apartments, whose power demand is large compared to the size of the EV battery. It is also inferred that the vehicle-to-home (V2H) system is unfeasible at suburban houses, to which the EV is not connected for most of the time.

In the Stuttgart region/Germany, a worldwide unique concentration of virtual engineering (VE) and virtual reality (VR) technology has led to the establishment of a so-called cluster initiative, that further boosts cooperation within this technological field. The Virtual Dimension Center (VDC), founded in 2002, is now one of the world’s biggest networks in VE and VR.

This paper analyzes the strategic innovation of a real company, which will be called “The Leader Company” for reasons of privacy and fairness, and verifies its performance in the aerospace industry in Sao Jose dos Campos—SP, particularly Avibras Aerospace SA, the Command for Aerospace Technology (DCTA), the Brazilian Aeronautics Enterprise SA (EMBRAER) and the National Institute for Space Research (INPE). It is concluded that “The Leader Company” constantly reinvents itself and has a strong strategy of corporate acquisitions and partnerships in order to rely on expertise from within and outside the company. It was also concluded that its performance in the aerospace industry in Sao Jose dos Campos is very early, and also the use of “The Leader Company” solutions in the companies verified, are still underdeveloped, thus, opportunities for “The Leader Company” on those institutions.

The value of software or functionality that is realized using software within modern cars is about 35 % of the value of the car itself. We typically have more than 70 ECU in a car with functionality realized and controlled by software. Although most of the current research is focused on software engineering issues, the problems addressed in the software area also occur in the development of mechanical components. Globalization is not limited to software, it also impacts the development departments of OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) with components requested and produced all over the world. Additionally, variability of hardware components used to customize cars is drastically increasing and can be compared to the variability growth in software. Therefore, the efficient and effective handling of requirements for mechanical parts is one of the key factors for a sustainable success within automobile industry. To be able to cope with the expected complexity, Volkswagen decided to introduce a new product line based requirements management methodology. The paper describes the developed methodology and experience made when introducing such a methodology.

Within the automotive industry, the client’s high demand for individually customized products is one of the main reasons for the growing number of software-based innovations implemented in embedded systems. A universal variability management across the different development phases, such as specification, testing and implementation phase, supports the reuse of the common set of assets and the coping with the resulting complexity of such systems. However, to prevent a propagation of potential incongruities into the subsequent development phases it is essential to ensure a consistent traceability of the variability information, namely features, between the specific development artefacts. Because of the high number of artefacts within the specifications and their complex n-to-m relationship, a systematic consistency checking is a challenging task and a methodical as well as automated solution is required. In this paper, we propose such an approach in order to identify different categories of inconsistencies of feature mapping between requirements and test artefacts across the according development phases. We sketch the tool environment and describe the concept within an industrial use-case: an embedded system of Daimler AG passenger car development.

This paper aims to present a framework for Requirements Concurrent Engineering (RCE) to be used in the development of complex products. Completeness and correctness are very important attributes in the processes of Requirements Engineering (RE) in complex products. A missing requirement results in a missing system attribute. A wrong requirement means a design mistake. In order to improve the process of capturing of all individual requirements, in a way that all kind of requirements receives the same level of attention, this paper proposes a framework which considers the entire life cycle, all processes and people involved. The proposed framework shall be used starting at the early stages of product development.

This paper strikes two technical aspects that have become commonly applied in engineering, but, nevertheless, barely benefit from each other, at least what today’s concurrent engineering is concerned. One of them has to do with 3D-Visualization, be it as an output of a CAD-system, or even photo-realistic rendered/ray traced images and animations of the product or production line under consideration, and the other deals with Formal Analysis, i.e., the verification of (safety) properties against a suitable formal model of the scenario. In this paper we bring both these aspects together. We show how behaviors of a system deduced from verification results can be visualized as animations in the 3D model of the system. We also discuss how modifications of the 3D scene like positioning and adding or removing of objects can be reflected in the formal model of the system. As formal basis we use the language of hybrid automata, as 3D modeling language we use XML3D.

Along the product development process concurrent engineering teams repeatedly create new product data and exchange it among each other as a logical input for subsequent engineering activities. Almost every piece of product data logically builds on another. However, usually product data is scattered over different, domain-specific IT systems and this physical separation is a challenge for product developers and IT experts. Since the management of logical interrelations between distributed product data is costly, such semantic links are often not modelled explicitly. Hence, engineers need to know these interrelations implicitly in order to ensure logical consistency of the overall product model. In this paper an approach for efficient semantic data integration and its application to an exemplary use case, knowledge-based test planning, is presented. It is supported by an integration framework that uses ontologies for interlinking different systems of virtual product creation. The paper also presents the findings of a case study on the process of defining a mapping between a requirements ontology and a domain-specific data exchange format, the Requirements Interchange Format (ReqIF).

The handling of product variability throughout the complete product life-cycle is known to be a challenging task. With this work we aim to achieve an efficient and provably consistent way of managing the dynamic field of product variability of customer specific gearboxes within the development process of the ZF Friedrichshafen AG. This work starts with an overview and an analysis of the current methodology to handle product variability within the overall development processes. After identifying possible improvements with respect to the current product data management system, the realization of these improvements is outlined with the help of a formal specification and a “prover-based” analysis of product variability.

Many of today’s extremely complex systems are cross-domain (covering more than one area of expertise). They require development by multiple stakeholder groups with different goals, each implementing a subset of the functionality required for these system of systems to operate. As these systems become more complex, it becomes more difficult to understand how the subsystems fit together into the whole. This paper investigates leveraging stakeholder use cases (created by different expert groups) by quantifying the similarities between the use case documents and using clustering algorithms to group the use cases together. This provides an idea of how systems and subsystems may be constructed to implement these use cases and help understand system interactions and boundaries.

A methodology is presented to estimate aerospace stiffened panel cost within conceptual design phase based on the Knowledge-Based Engineering (KBE) technique. A modular cost estimation with product, process, cost result modules has been developed. An approach of using cost primitives for cost calculation is proposed. Required inputs of the cost estimation are provided by the product model layout with optimized structural size. A set of specific parameters including part function, materials, manufacturing methods are correspondent to one type of cost primitive. Manufacturing cost is estimated by summing up the cost of different combinations of parameterized cost primitives. Through a case study, the framework presented in this paper is verified as a modular and fast tool to assist designers performing design decision in the early stage. The cost of thermoplastic stiffened panel can benefit from its low manufacturing assembly cost.

With the growth of the knowledge-based economy, intellectual property right (IPR) is recognized as a key factor to develop and protect the strategic competitiveness and innovation of an enterprise. Patents are used to encourage and protect inventions and to stimulate commercial development complying with legal IPRs. Due to growing number of patents, most patent information management systems lack advanced analytical and decision support methodologies and tools. The purpose of this research is to develop a patent defense system using the combination of ontology engineering and improved overlapping clustering method. The ontology engineering approach analyzes patent claims while structuring and extracting patent characteristics for technical domain schema construction. The research uses the overlapping clustering method to analyze related patents and compare their claim elements based on the patent ontology and infringement rules. The research also studies actual patent litigation cases to demonstrate the effectiveness and applicability of the research solutions.

While the globalization has led to an increase of the competition in the automobile market, customer requirements have increased and products have to satisfy higher standards. All this drives companies to shorten their product development cycles while boosting innovation. In order to reach this objective, reusing knowledge as well as focusing on creative tasks while automating routine tasks has proven to be a successful approach. As independent engineering partner, EDAG GmbH & Co. KGaA, develops advanced methods and tools in order to keep its processes continuously efficient. This paper presents some methodologies for accelerating mechanical design using knowledge based techniques with the CAD System NX. A knowledge based concept for efficient design is presented and validated with the process of glove box development.

Concurrent Engineering concentrate on enterprise collaboration and its many difference elements using multi/interdisciplinary solutions, ranging from integrating people involved in design/production to processes of whole production life cycle. In the mean time, digital dentistry is getting popular these days supported by various design/manufacturing support tools, machines, and systems. This paper covers an approach of CE towards dental applications, including design of dental milling machine, digital dentistry in crown preparation process, and design of angle measurement devices for dentists. Each of these topics is from the individual research projects conducted by the collaboration team of the author. Reviewing these research results, this paper discusses the feasibility of concurrent engineering towards digital dentistry.

A practical methodology for automation application development has been developed that introduces a variable level of complexity as required by the processes to be automated and the organisation in which it is developed. This paper gives a description of the application of the AMAAD methodology to the first four life-cycle phases of a Knowledge-Based System (KBS). The case study involves the design, development and test of automated system for wire harness routing through complex structures. The first four phases are Problem Identification, Feasibility Analysis, Knowledge Acquisition (KA) and Knowledge Modelling (KM).

To solve several types of project management problems, efficient project management is being demanded. Success or failure of the project hangs to the skill of project manager. If the knowledge is considered to be a kind of judgment for the effective action, first of all the registration of manager’s action and experience is needed. Group of low-level information and data is called knowledge in this paper. It is necessary to register the knowledge easily. But it is difficult to find the timing to register the knowledge. It is difficult to find the time that information should be registered on. This paper describes the method of finding the best timing to have to register the knowledge. I tried to take into the change in progress of the project in order to get the knowledge in addition to the EVM method. EVM (Earned Value Management) is one of the methods for scientific managing the progress of the project. On the other hand, the time that progress changes seem the best timing of registration. As the result, it has been understood that there is a possibility that the knowledge can be registered automatically.

Product data contains one of the most valuable assets of a company – the intellectual property (IP). Especially the modern parametric and feature-based 3D CAD systems have been enhanced towards acquiring, representing, processing and distributing knowledge to support KBE (Knowledge-Based Engineering) within the virtual product creation. However, it is very easy to exchange any product related information by electronic media. In the age of the globalism the product data exchange between different parties in the supply chain has become the ubiquitous and frequent form of business communication by transferring huge amounts of product data within the virtual enterprise. So there is an enormous threat that the intellectual property could fall into the wrong hands and badly damage the product innovation in a momentous way. This contribution analyzes this area of conflict, discusses the need for action in supplier networks and describes attempts from research and development as well as productive software solutions for intellectual property protection (IPP) based on CAD models and their best practices.

In this paper, a Knowledge Lifecycle Model is proposed to enable the characterisation and quantification of change in knowledge elements, which is a potentially important contributing factor in judging the applicability of the knowledge-based system approach for business and engineering tasks.. The model consists of knowledge states and knowledge actions. The latter enable the measurement of knowledge change in various stages of a product lifecycle. The Knowledge Lifecycle Model is tested using airworthiness directives data for initial validation of the model concepts and knowledge behaviour in the aerospace domain. It is shown that knowledge states and actions are an appropriate way of modelling and measuring knowledge, but further quantitative research is needed to validate and generalize the model.

The paper deals with the scenario of the development of an application in Extended Knowledge Based Engineering. This approach is based on a set of UML templates which reflect standard, software constructions usually used in actual generation of engineering software. These templates have both software and engineering design roots. The building of the Extended KBE application is realized as a modeling with templates. Usually a final application is later integrated with a commercial CAD/CAE system and its KBE module. With the help of the templates, the Extended KBE application can be developed relatively fast. Apart from the ability of operating with templates, the application developer must have a clearly articulated domain knowledge because the efficiency of the whole approach depends on the quality and completeness of his knowledge.

For the purpose of lowering the overall cost of defense war-fighter acquisitions, both the United States Government and the Australian Commonwealth Government mandate Performance-Based Contracting (PBC) methods upon acquisition and through life support contracts. Demanding military aerospace acquisition and sustainment requirements however, present the defense industry with a significant challenge; that every military contract being unique. Consequently this is inherent in the design of defense PBC through the combination of desired Outcomes and Key Performance Indicators (KPI). Attempts to manage multiple PBC across multiple platforms become inefficient, as the analysis of data is sourced from a multitude of systems. In this chapter, we utilize multi-disciplinary methodologies together in accordance with a PBC Framework, to design and integrate a Knowledge System with a Fuzzy Logic Controller for the automation of condition based analysis of military aerospace PBC.

The authors present a method and system based on a method for aiding a designer by use of augmented reality techniques. The presented method uses Unified Modeling Language diagrams in acquisition and knowledge representation. The presented method allows the delivering of knowledge to the designer in both procedural and declarative representations. It is important that the method also use multimedia representation of knowledge, especially interactive animated 3D CAD models. Knowledge is delivered to the user by use of augmented reality techniques. AR is a technique for changing views of virtual data – especially 3D models – in a real environment. AR allows the user to understand the presented virtual data and knowledge in a more comprehensive way, thus making the design process more efficient than that presently supported by conventional present-day CAD systems.

The fear of knowledge loss by experts retiring or leaving the company forces the company to capture the experts’ knowledge and manage it appropriately for future use. This paper aims to capture the best practice for the Finite Element Analysis process in design engineering environment. There are three initial phases in developing FEA models which are classification of the problem, discretization and Modelling. The modelling stage has further classified to three steps, namely: pre-processing, analysis and post-processing. The best practice was captured through different mechanisms including interviews, observation, literature studies and practically using the finite element tools. The captured knowledge will be helpful to improve the current FEA techniques and to accelerate the learning curve for new employee joining the company.

This paper introduces the development of a three-dimensional bicycle design and analysis system. Recently, three-dimensional CAD systems have been introduced in bicycle design, but it is essential to automate many routines and difficult work to reduce design time and cost. To accomplish this object, we first analyzed design activities and main design parameters of bicycle frame and crank assembly, and then built a standard part library. We developed a design automation system that allows users to get three-dimensional bicycle models simply by changing pre-defined dimensions. We also developed a bicycle structural analysis system that guides users to structural performance evaluation step-by-step. By using these systems, design can be performed more intuitively, and verification and simulation of design results can be done more easily.

The paper describes a methodology to build key performance indicators (KPI) from existing product data and the advantage gained in the design and engineering process by using KPIs. With the guidance of the KPIs, developers are able to work more efficiently. Currently, KPIs only used as a controlling instrument for projects and processes. An example of a new type of KPI is the ‘Standardization Degree’. The ‘Standardization Degree’ is calculated from a number of product data. Making use of this calculated KPI, parts or assemblies could be indicated with a special attribute. These indications would be stored in the product data management (PDM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) system of an enterprise. Then, during future engineering processes, the developer can be guided by these indicators in the development of cost-effective carry-over part strategies for the enterprise in a meaningful and low-cost way. Hence, with the use of KPIs in the design and engineering process at the beginning of the life cycle of a product, the enterprises are able to save considerable expense.

For critical airline components, design and failure data is not released by the manufacturer, and the maintenance execution of these components is mandated, planned and executed by the manufacturer. This yields maintenance practices identical for all systems within the fleet, independent of the historical usage of the operator. And since the design spectrum is not validated towards the actual usage spectrum, this will result in too early replacements of components which in turn increase life-cycle maintenance costs and reduce overall availability. In this research, a usage severity driven maintenance framework is proposed, which zooms in at the actual failure mechanisms applied on the component and then calculates its service live based on the loads acting on the component under several circumstances. For the Chinook T-55 engine, this maintenance strategy reduces life-cycle maintenance costs with 20 % while availability has increased.

Promoting environmentally conscious energy policies to reduce carbon emissions is a mutual duty of the international community. Several cities or government regions have implemented strategies and means to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. New efforts focus on introducing green policies, which reduce the largest contributors of the carbon footprint in given regions or islands. This research develops a new approach combining the economic input–output life cycle assessment (EIO-LCA) and location quotient (LQ) approach to measure regional carbon footprint with unique industrial settings. The results enable government policy makers to accurately and effectively formulate policies that target critical contributors while matching expected economic development goals. The case study of Penghu Island in Taiwan shows that the transportation sector has the most significant impact on island-wide carbon emissions. The LQ-based EIO-LCA model is used to analyze the carbon emissions across nine industrial categories and target specific industries that will dramatically lower emissions through incentives and industrial restructuring.

A business process estimation method is proposed. It is directed on preproduction stage that starts with proto-design and ends with production planning. A method of extraction of the target product and process characteristics from the requirements specification is considered. The estimation method is based on fuzzy reasoning and uses linguistic expressions to evaluate the process. The process improvement procedure, based on Bellman’s Principle of Optimality, is proposed. The results of software implementation are described. To obtain integration with product lifecycle software systems web-technologies are used. The proposed estimation method is helpful to evaluate the products and the processes on early stages. It deals with non-numerical attributes of a product and process, which influence may not be calculated directly. The work is directed on automotive, electronics and aerospace industry. The approach may be applied in medical sphere.

Project engineering covers all technical related activities, processes and tools to realize a customer specific solution (e.g. industrial plant or factory) from conceptual design to commissioning. Consequently, project engineering deter-mines both, costs and quality of customer-specific projects. Due to growing com-plexity of industrial projects and rising cost pressure caused by new players in the market, companies specialized on project engineering have to improve quality and reduce costs of their engineering results continuously. This paper shows how engineering companies can be supported in mastering these challenges by joining together in an ‘Engineering Community’. Therefore, a community model consisting of the three key variables ‘content & activities’, ‘stakeholders’ and ‘infrastructure’ has been developed.

The idea of a temporal sequence of phenomena, present in the process concept, is a challenge for the concurrent engineering (CE) development. There, inherent concepts as overlap, interaction, and iteration of activities are not jet enough treated. It misses new methodologies and models leading to concurrent processes. For replacing sequential process models representations, we propose a contextual model expressing actions and interactions of interrelated internal and external agents. A group of social or organizational complementary processes, or a particular process, aiming to specific objectives could be represented as a graph of involved interacting agents connected among them by processes or process’s activities. We use business processes of an engineering service firma for illustrating the proposed approach.

This paper presents a method to scan for process improvements in the product development process by means of reducing wasted time and optimizing the information flow. The method addresses the initiatives Lean Engineering, Knowledge Management, and Knowledge Based Engineering to make an effective trade-off. The improvement focus is on the application of automation through Knowledge Based Engineering.

The application of composites has been increasing dramatically in aerospace structures recently, for example, composites have contributed over 50 % of the structure mass of large transport airplanes. However, the further usage has been restricted because of the high material and manufacturing costs. Hence, it is essential to utilise cost estimation tools for accurate cost estimation in the early design stages, and then efficient decisions and design optimisations could be made to reduce the cost of composite products. A cost modelling system has been developed for aerospace CFRP composites, which can help designers and cost engineers to estimate the manufacturing cost in early development stages. The system consists of several modules: material selection, process planning, cost estimation, cost reporting and a user friendly interface. Moreover, the selection and planning modules are combined with databases, including material and process.

The paper deals with investigating the competitive advantage of using Concurrent Engineering practices in a Cellular Service Provider Company. This paper is based on an investigative approach of remodelling the current practices and standard operating procedures in accordance with Concurrent Engineering Concepts. It also analyses the competitive advantage that a company may get after implementation of Concurrent Engineering practices. The results shows that after applications of Concurrent Engineering concepts like intra team cooperation, decision by consensus, and parallelism significant improvement in time-delay can be achieved in tasks/products. Furthermore a Concurrent Engineering Model based on generic structure of a Cellular Service Provider is also put forth.

This paper presents a model that helps engine management make cost saving decisions. The model is developed around airline-influenced factors that have an impact on engine Maintenance Repair and Overhaul (MRO): Operations, maintenance philosophy, contract type, and fleet age. Within the model a decision support tool is developed to analyze the impact of possible changes made to variables that influence engine MRO (engine thrust setting, shop visit schedule, and workscopes) on maintenance cost. The objective of the model is to support Engineering and Maintenance in defining a maintenance philosophy, which includes engine time on-wing and Life Limited Parts management strategies. This maintenance philosophy will help with maintenance schedule optimization aiming at matching engine maintenance status to phase-out conditions at end of lease contracts, while at the same time reducing engine direct maintenance cost.

Products are becoming more complex to the extent that some elements of the design may be outsourced to multiple external vendors. Hence, any changes made during design activities can generate significant additional costs and time With high upfront design and development costs being common place specifically in low-volume high-value electronics production, the ability to accurately predict the anticipated financial burden of both these activities, and through-life production changes is of great importance to a business, especially in light of probable future influences such as environmentally driven legislation. The paper describes a new approach to address such issues, through the development of an Eco-Financial Decision Support System to help electronics companies provide rapid responses and quotations for the design and development of new or obsolescent products. These will be addressed through development towards ‘Design for Eco-Finance’ (DfEF), a new component of the DfX family, which will allow designers to perform a

‘

trade-off

’

between environmental impacts and costs, supporting the financially viable, sustainable design of electronics products.

Interest from industry in reverse manufacturing is increasing due to market drivers such as higher costs for resources and increasing government legislation aimed at reducing waste. In order for companies to take advantage of this business opportunity, awareness and understanding of the role of uncertainty within reverse manufacturing and its influence on performance parameters of cost, time and quality must be acknowledged. Although decision support tools exist in literature, they currently lack a holistic approach in modeling the interrelated effects of performance parameters and uncertainty within the business. The purpose of this paper therefore is to propose a framework in which future decision tools can be created for reverse manufacturing. The effects of this framework are then demonstrated with current business scenarios, using reverse manufacturing case study examples.

This paper propose a multi-agent system, called ADEA (

Agents-based DEsign Activity Analysis

), to validate some properties of a theory for design activity reasoning. In this theory, two axioms are proposed to govern design activity. Axiom 1 deals with relations between the descriptors of an artefact: means and effects. Axiom 2 deals with actors and their roles in design activity. From the two defined axioms, some properties of the design activity theoretical model have been shown. ADEA’s platform design lays explicitly on the properties drawn from the proposed design activity theory. The originality of ADEA is the reactive behaviour of autonomous and distributed agents following the evolution of the design space. Each agent has a role relatively to the proposed theory and is both cognitive and reactive. ADEA permits to show the properties of design activity as co-evolution of the problem and solution, emergence of design parameters, rules and real resulting parameters, temporal continuity of design activity, knowledge computing and reactivity.

The concurrent engineering (CE) approach has been successfully applied to the early design phase of space missions. During CE sessions, a software support is needed to allow multidisciplinary design data exchange. At the moment, a spreadsheet-based solution enhanced with macros is used at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) to create a system model of a space mission during the early design phase. Now there is an increasing demand to take advantage of this system model and provide data analysis features which improve the decision making during CE sessions. Since the current approach is limited for such analysis, DLR has started developing a new tool called Virtual Satellite. It offers extended software support required by the Concurrent Engineering Facility of DLR in Bremen. On top of the previous spreadsheet functionalities, it provides means for online data analysis and system modeling. The results of these data analyses are presented to the discipline experts using different views which help in performing an early design optimization. In this paper, the impact of these views on the decision making during the AEGIS space mission study is presented as a proof of concept.

Eco-businesses that satisfy environmental consciousness and high quality of life simultaneously can be the keys to establish a sustainable society. However, since eco-businesses have at least 2 criteria, environmental and economical aspects, it is sometimes difficult to overcome the trade-offs and determine a proper business strategy. In this paper, a method proposed by the authors and named Total Performance Analysis (TPA) is applied to evaluate business options. Although there is a conflict between 2 well-known indexes, ‘eco-efficiency’ and ‘value per cost,’ the paper shows the newly proposed index can adjust the conflict through the case study. The paper tries to conclude that the TPA is a suitable method for decision-making of eco-business under multi-criteria, not only because it can evaluate environmental and economical aspects both, but also because it can model rise and fall of products’ values throughout life cycles. Such feature of the TPA is important to simulate the effects of business options properly combined with products.

There are a large number of uncertainties of the design variables and the requirements while the decision-making process at the early phase of design has the greatest effect upon the lead time of development and the overall cost. Designers need to figure out an outline of the structural feature and have to compare the evaluation results of diverse design ideas from multiple aspects under some uncertain design information at the early phase of structural design. We have proposed a preference set-based design (PSD) method that generates a ranged set of design solutions that satisfy sets of performance requirements. This study proposes a decision-making support method for the early phase of structural design based on the PSD method that is possible to analyze, obtain and compare diverse design ideas with design uncertainty and variability by elastic FEM. We apply the proposed method to a structural form of a bridge with uncertainties of cross-section area of members and dimension of structure (coordinates of geometry) under fluctuating distribution of performance characteristics of the maximum stress and the mass.

This paper proposes a methodology to evaluate organizational performance. Developed system defines workers, facilities, activity models and production strategy. Evaluation of organizational performance is done through the following processes: (1) create the enterprise model and strategy, (2) calculate work plan by optimizing the weights of each strategy, (3) compare the basic scenario to the scenario when a situation changes. The system proposes a work plan by genetic algorithm. The plan minimizes the total cost in doing the work activities considering the weight of each production strategy. The proposed methodology is applied to some sample scenarios in a fabrication shop. Results show that the methodology can evaluate organizational performance successfully by analyzing the work plan. In addition, the methodology also evaluates the effect of improving organization and sudden trouble quantitatively.

The goal of this paper is to present a taxonomy model for describing the knowledge of engineering models within an approach which encourages a systematic design in practice. The proposed taxonomy is based on the principles of the axiomatic design approach, structured on four levels of modeling: (1) conceptual (2) mathematical (3) computational and (4) experimental. In practice, the application has shown that it is rarely possible to work through the whole design process in four levels of modeling. However a complete engineering modeling analysis is necessary for a good project management. The proposed framework can be used for the diagnostic of the engineering design process. It captures the knowledge of design engineers through the building models.

This paper deals with the usage of multi-objective optimization techniques in the early stage of vehicle development. Integration of multi-objective optimization tools with vehicle dynamics simulation tools can provide significant improvements in the development process. Development of the optimization model, based on evolutionary algorithms, that is able to handle a large number of variables, constraints and objectives, and the usage of vehicle dynamics simulation tools, is a precondition for a complete solution for the conceptual phase of vehicle development. Some necessary steps lead to development of optimization models. These steps are identification of influence parameters, selection of criteria for the evaluation of vehicle dynamic characteristics and selection of optimization algorithms. Using a simulation eliminates the need for vehicle prototype in the early stage of development and reduces costs of development. Achieving optimum parameters of the vehicle at this stage of development reduces the possibility of wrong solutions or concepts.

Unfortunately troubles, delays, and failures have become an inherent part of most of oilfield projects involving downhole operations. Unseen problems have forced field engineers and specialists to act on reactive response principle rather than preventive measures, making the possibility of delays and plan changes more frequent. This paper attempts to provide some possible solutions to reduce the risk of delays and failures. These solutions are based on concurrent engineering methods involving cooperative teams, information sharing, and real time collaboration between rig and office experts. Recent case studies have been discussed for instance which include some failures which could be avoided using CE principles implementation. The proposed solutions provide an effective way of risk mitigation. The solutions are based on real time communication, information sharing, and parallelization of tasks.

Service-oriented management is becoming increasingly popular to create new business infrastructures able to self-organize tangible and intangible manufacturing assets in a distributed and interoperable way. The final scope is to manage not simply the Product but also Services along the value chain. This paper presents an interesting case study about a great modern challenge: the implementation of such a service-oriented approach and the shift from PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) to SLM (Service Lifecycle Management). It describes business requirements elicitation towards the creation of an SLM-based ecosystem in collaboration with an Italian company leader in household appliances. The case study focuses on washing machines, analyses the traditional product use and a new service-oriented scenario and defines a list of requirements to be implemented for the creation of the future SLM-based ecosystem.

Product modelling is essential during the conceptual design both in the functional and the structural design spaces. However, there is no adapted formal representation to support the functional modelling of products in CAD systems. Decompositions and grammars can be considered as formal powerful tools to describe products. Grammars can operate on sets of functions as well as on sets of shapes. Grammars operating on the set of the function are called Fuzzy Function Grammars; otherwise those operating on the set of shapes are called Fuzzy Shapes Grammars. The two grammars work simultaneously to model product. The evolution of the product model, from the functional structure to the physical structure, is done using axiomatic design. Using grammars and axiomatic design approach constitutes an effective tool for functional modelling of products in CAD system. The proposed design approach is validated by the application to a design case of industrial products. The results of the application validate the interest of proposed approach.

Facing a competitive and globalized market and with increasingly demanding customers, companies must constantly seek the development of practices in the development of new products. One of the current practices is the adoption of modularity. In that sense, the objective of this paper is to conduct an analysis of this practice in a Brazilian company, which manufactures agricultural machinery. The understanding of modular concept for product engineering is investigated as well as current practices adopted by the company. The applicability of modular design in current products is focused. Regarding the research method, these involve firstly a literature review followed by field research using data collected from interviews with product engineers and document analysis as source of evidence. From the results, it is possible to conclude that the adoption of modularity in the development of new products increases production flexibility, reduces product development time and provides economy of scale, with the purchase of standard components in greater volume.

About 70 % of a system life-cycle cost is during the operations phase. Support activities, including maintenance, upgrades and repairs, are high cost items. In the past decade, performance-based contracting has become a standard agreement between the OEM and the customer that defines a fixed price for a guaranteed level of system performance over a given period of time. This puts the risks associated with support cost with the supplier. A means of cost reduction in the support phase is the use of Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COST) components. One of the issues with COTS however is obsolescence. The life of a COTS component is usually much shorter than the life of a defence system. This paper discusses a number of issues associated with the incorporation of COTS components in defence systems, their support and obsolescence management.

The article discusses the theoretical and practical aspects of the factors influencing the concurrent development of a new product designed within an early development-and-construction process. Taking into account the previous methods like morphological matrices, a new method—the matrix of functions and functionalities (MFF)—has been identified and presented. This method is not based on the elemental designer’s intuition, but is designed mathematically, providing abstract guidelines and allowing continual self-control in the cases of repeat results. It is based on functional requirements and functionalities. The article also describes the practical computing environment and the application, which has been tested by implementing various products.

This paper proposes a support system for flight service management based on a service model. This system represents flight services as a service model consists of three sub services: (1) transportation service, (2) operation service, (3) maintenance service. According to the service model, each service is described according to its provider and receiver and then flight service management can be addressed from the viewpoint of any provider/receiver as necessary. Based on the flight service model, a simulation is presented for revenue management while a system is proposed for operation management, which is applicable to the scheduling and rescheduling problems of aircraft, crew and maintenance. Finally, a prototype system is presented with a case study based on actual data from flight services.

This research introduces an intelligent system for the quality assurance of Chinese medicine dispensing system using in Taiwan. A quality enhancing pharmacy dispensing system is made through the use of RFID techniques. The system may reduce the possibility of errors caused by human factors and ensure the quality for the Chinese pharmacy dispensing system. The natures of several steps of current Chinese medicine dispensing procedures are irreversible. Hence, double checks for those steps to ensure the quality become impossible. In the innovative-intelligent dispensing system, new processes are established with RFID technique as enabler. Hence, errors caused by human factors are extremely diminished. Prescription and pharmacy dispensing procedures are double checked with fewer burdens on pharmacists. Our efforts include prescription electrolyzed at the front end, light-indicator-aided picking system to help the pharmacist picking the exact medicine during dispensing, RFID embedded cabinet to perform the double check function, electrical weighting scale to make sure the right amount, and database to record and trace the scene when errors occur.

Environmental issues are playing an important role in the sustainable development of the steel and concrete industries. Using Concurrent Engineering (CE) as a business strategy which replaces the traditional product development process with one in which tasks are done in parallel and there is an early consideration for every aspect of a product development process Sykes Energiprojekts accomplished significant improvements in cost and quality of design and construction projects. This strategy focuses on the optimization and distribution of a firm’s resources in the design and development process to ensure effective and efficient product development process. Use of “green” materials embodies low energy costs. Their use must have high durability and low maintenance leading to sustainable construction materials.

Supply chain management and early involvement of suppliers into product development process is one of the key elements of concurrent engineering. Internet based Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) system can improve communication between customers and suppliers. In the case study is presented a communication model and configuration of the PLM system that supports a second tier system supplier in automotive industry and its sub-suppliers. First set of activities is during the development phase of the project and later for engineering change management. The method of work and documents structure is based on the automotive industry practice [2] and it is upgraded with some specific solutions. We believe that this concept can be applied also to other types of production. The product data model is a core of all activities in the product development process therefore it is used as a backbone. PLM system is used to manage product data and it is a key connection between customer and supplier. PLM system does not replace personal communication, face to face meetings and product validation. PLM system is a meeting point where people can get and upload product data. In this way they can work more efficiently.

The new product development process (NPD) is one crucial factor for the success of enterprises. Long before the first instance of a new product can be produced and sold, the development process determines the functionality, design and price of a product to be placed on the markets. Today, the product development process is supported by IT systems. Product Data Management (PDM) tools are used to manage the relevant data and processes. Contemporary PDM systems support a lot of different, PDM-related data types and systems that create and use the data. Besides the PDM systems, there are other, more specialized systems which hold additional artifacts to be used in the NPD. This leads to the requirement to integrate those systems and to provide access to their data through the PDM system. This article focuses on the role of PDM data and PDM Systems in the NPD. The integration of data and processes in the NPD will be explained and case studies will be provided.

The absolute must of Concurrent Engineering approach is to paralely evolve, continuously improve and gradually refine the processes of multiple disciplines. These processes are subjected to several assessments in a regular basis to optimize the effectiveness and benefits in the Concurrent Engineering development process. As a rule of thumb, detailed maturity criteria are to be developed early in the process which principally will determine the cut-off points (maturity gates) for the establishment and enhancement of the cross-functional integration and collaboration of multiple disciplines among the product’s lifecycle. This paper will examine the fundamentals of designating the maturity criteria and determining the maturity level requirements of each associated maturity gate in order to enhance the Product Lifecycle Management precepts. Methodology of collaborative studies to determine the maturity levels will be outlined and the procedures will be detailed. Furthermore, determined methodology will be applied and a maturity model will be proposed.

In this paper a research on the practical application of prognostic enhancements of health and usage monitoring systems is presented. By combining prognostic theories for improving the predictability of lead time intervals to maintenance inspections, it is demonstrated that a practical application can be realized. This research is performed on the health and usage monitoring system of the NH-90 helicopter, MDS. By focusing on failure modes of components, the prognostic methodology enables relating specific component usage to remaining useful life predictions. This is performed for three case studies to determine improvements on their predictability for lead time’s intervals. With these results a comparison is made to the current component’s maintenance strategy. It is seen that an improvement in predictability was realized.

The quotation preparation in the manufacturing industry is very important. From a subcontractor view, it is initiated by a customer request for quotation and precedes the order preparation where detailed manufacturing and cost information are generated. Customers are continuously seeking for lower bids and cost reduction and despite the lack of detailed information a fixed price has to be set. Commonly, subcontractors are also acting on a market where the competition of staying in business and submitting a winning bid is intense and the result of the quotation process has a direct influence on the final business success. Hence, it is essential to enable quotations to be based on a higher level of detailed information and introduce support to increase the efficiency in quotation preparation. The purpose of this work is to investigate, explore, and develop a computerized method, i.e. an application system, to support the process planning and cost estimation in the quotation process. The main objective is to reveal concepts and principles to support application system development and utilization. The results are based on the experiences from a case study at a subcontractor of turned components.

When the source system is not available, too costly to propagate widely, or full model fidelity is not required, standardized 3D formats are essential when exchanging and distributing 3D models in the engineering and other domains. One key attribute of any standardized 3D format includes versatility, which allows development data to be used in departments also outside of the engineering department, a high level of data security and the ability to extend the format to include future developments. From a wide variety of data formats JT has distinguished itself in recent years, and is currently seen in many companies as the most potential lightweight data format for visualization in engineering processes. This contribution provides an overview of the state of development, the committees’ activities as well as current examples from practice.

During the last decade, companies in the manufacturing industries have heavily invested into their PLM environments. So on the one hand enterprise processes like engineering release or engineering change management have been well organized inside the enterprise. On the other hand, supply chains have been heavily evolving in various manufacturing domains since the 1990’s. Combined with this, the demand for cross enterprise collaboration has also highly increased. So there is the need for solutions, which take into account, that the participants of collaboration processes work in their own enterprise environments and therefore need solutions which can be integrated into varying enterprise environments. Nevertheless, each company of course has to take care to protect its Intellectual Property. The presentation gives an overview, how solutions based on 3D PDF can bring added value into this scenario by combining the contrary demands for “easy to use” solutions and IP protection for each enterprise.

Automotive manufacturers are challenged by a growing number of product derivatives, decreasing sales figures of each product, shorter product life cycles and increasing market dynamics. There is a strong need for a competitive cost-optimal engineering and production. Therefore multidisciplinary require-ments have to be taken into account in early phases of the product development process. The tool helping to consider these requirements could be a web-based Assistance for the development engineers and other involved people during the process. The Assistance can be embedded in the CAD system or accessed directly with a web-browser. The opportunities of having a user tailored tool working with a web-based interface across different systems where different user groups inside the enterprise are working without waste of time would avoid duplication of effort and might help to develop the Competitive Innovation Advantage (CIA). This paper describes the principle and usage of an Assistance at the field of Standard-Part-Management between product development and production planning.

Following the mechatronic as contemporary engineering discipline the integration of mechanical and electrical CAD (MCAD/ECAD) systems is a big challenge because the data models and functionality of modern MCAD and ECAD systems have been developed continuously further apart. Market research confirms that an integrated tool for ECAD and MCAD design is prerequisite for a better mechatronic development process. This paper describes the concept and implementation of 3D CAD system for mechatronic products which combines all the known functions for circuit layout design - such as read netlist, placing components, wiring conductor pattern and verify design rules - with the multiple possibilities for spatial modeling and visualization in a development tool. The overview of typical applications like creeping, 3D MID and air gap analysis is also given.

Concurrent engineering in distributed development environments like those characteristic of the automotive industry place enormous demands on the organization of collaboration between the companies and departments involved. Efficient data communication in all phases of the product development process is a prerequisite for lean and flexible collaboration processes. Automotive suppliers that develop system components for a number of different OEMs or tier-1 suppliers face the challenge of ensuring that they make the CAD data available in the format required by their customers and with a high level of reliability and, if data translation is involved, that they take the system configuration of the respective customer into consideration. One possible approach to reducing the amount of time and effort involved and achieving a higher level of data communication reliability is outsourcing data translation and data exchange to an experienced service provider. This article describes use case of the Automotive Market at SKF: the data communication requirements of a global automotive supplier implemented with the web-based exchange service provided by PROSTEP AG.

This paper describes a new application of virtual reality technology (VR) to the simulation of turning and milling machines and the handling of component parts by robotics. The simulation to exact production parameters of a complex production line consisting of a couple of machines together with robotics as a complete plant by a single software tool is currently not possible. With the aid of a new application of VR, it is feasible to connect several specialized software products and their simulation results. The use of VR, in which models simulate the production with virtual machines and plants, makes it feasible to obtain the same production parameters as from physical prototypes. With such an application used in the engineering and design processes of new products and complex production lines, manufacturers are able to save a lot of both development time and costs.

This paper reflects the current work on the integration of time management in the digital factory of a commercial vehicles manufacturer which uses standardized processes and tools for the globally distributed production. To eliminate deficits in the integration of leading planning tools, a methodical approach was established in order to develop application protocols based on a systematic basis for the digital factory. Therefore, a joint project with both industrial and research partners has been accomplished. Beside the fundamental methodology for the standardization in the digital factory as further important result a bidirectional interface between the software products Teamcenter Manufacturing and TiCon has been developed to validate the research approach against the industrial use cases.

In the field of machine tool design and process planning the use of different numerical simulation systems is increasing. However, in most cases communication of simulation components is implemented according to the particular configuration of software tools. In this context, an XML based communication protocol for computer simulations of machine tool components is presented. For representing the functionality of the machine, a number of partial models build up a network of interacting, distributed units. The separation of the communicating parts follows a functional view rather than the physical assembly of the machine tool. Each component is represented by a standardized schema and acts as a black box to the outside. The resulting exchangeability of functional components enables fast reconfiguration of the overall simulation and thus concurrent development of different parts and reusability of developed models.

The paper presents an application of concurrent process planning and scheduling into the manufacturing company of turned parts. The first topic is strategic resource optimisation in the phase of new products process plan development. The second topic is how to handle consequences of unplanned events like urgent order from an important customer or a machine brake down. In order to optimise the efficiency of turning manufacturing process, the process has been analyzed and re-engineered. All data from production (operations, quantities, date, time duration of operations, etc.) is now located in ERP system. It provides the necessary condition for the establishment of a robust planning and scheduling model. The article presents the information support and the algorithm based on genetic algorithm. Production capacities have to be linked up with a supply chain and customers. The presented planning and scheduling model can be adapted to various types of production.

Virtual Environments (VEs) offer a significant contribution to concurrent engineering tasks. At present there are few VEs available that differ in cooperation features and individual requirements. In this paper we analyze the added value and problematic aspects for several approaches like table top systems, large projection systems, collaborative augmented reality and distributed virtual environments. The conducted study is helping the user to choose the appropriate VE according to the engineering task and individual requirements.

Due to increasing legislative demand and rising material and energy costs, there have been growing interests in maximising the useful phase of a product’s lifecycle via sustainable extended-life options such as remanufacturing. Due to the modern disparate nature of the manufacturing supply chain, there are several complex issues to be recognised when embarking on end of life product processing, including data availability and the corresponding knowledge gaps that prevent businesses from effective decision making. This paper presents a novel knowledge-based framework, designed to support a business in assessing the suitability of a product for remanufacture when considering critical product parameters and business key performance indicators (KPIs). The structure of the framework is discussed and an example case study is presented in the context of business knowledge requirements for remanufacturing.

This paper presents a new A3 thinking approach of problem solving to support the Lean Product and Process Development (LeanPPD) in knowledge-based environment. The new approach allows the design team to obtain the scientific knowledge in a structured manner. It also enables them to understand the linkage between hypothesis and practice which results from the new understanding and could be considered as new learning. This knowledge will support the designers in effective decision making whilst directly attacking the waste during the next of the product development phases and future projects surrounded by the knowledge rich environment. The industrial field study has carried out among thirty six designers and engineers in European manufacturing companies. The best practices of problem solving approaches and mechanism and challenges of knowledge capture have been collected. Therefore, the A3 thinking approach is proposed to be developed that stemmed to the industries requirements.

There are various possibilities to evaluate the cost and time factors of processes. But these possibilities do not permit a quality assessment of business processes. For such processes, we need methods and performance measurement systems, which are not oriented solely on concrete measureable results. However, it is important to be able to assess and improve process quality. The aim of the method is to determine the quality of a process area. In addition, areas of action are discovered, in which processes can and should improve, in order to reach a more mature level. This method opens up a possibility for an organization to advance a continuous improvement of business processes with an assessment method to account for long term lasting effects. Furthermore, metrics will be established in order to measure and monitor the quality of processes and to provide a foundation which consists of a self-critical view on one’s own processes.

In recent years, product design and development has shifted its paradigm from focusing on functional and technological aspects to user-centered concerns. Therefore, understanding consumers’ experience and satisfying their requirements become essential for a successful product. Designers are encouraged to design for users’ multi-sensory experience from the contextual level. In this study we propose a Scenario Co-build System (SCS) to fill in the gap that individual difference is seldom considered when tackling the multiple contextual factors in user involvement. It aims at helping users and designers to co-build a more customized scenario which can link up with one’s real life more closely to facilitate the acquisition of user experience. Based on the SCS, a case study in online shopping is carried out to investigate users’ dynamic multi-sensory experience under three basic phases, viz. ‘purchasing phase’, ‘first contacting phase’ and ‘afterward using phase’. Several issues including sensory compensation, the representation types, differences between expected and real experience, emotions, individual differences and influence of scenarios are discussed in this study.

The technological evolution over the last decades brought the necessity of integration among different areas of knowledge and an example is the integration between the Odontology and Engineering in order to find new solutions to improve the surgical process of dental implants. This work proposes a reasoning system to support the implant planning process based on tomographic images which offers support to the dentist. The system creates a three dimensional model of the dental arch and interact with the dentist supporting him in the selection of the most appropriate implant. So, the reasoning proceedings is divided into stages, the first is for selecting the region of interest inside the bone and the second is for defining the implant which should be used. This system is a planning tool to assist the dentist during the pre-operative, it will help him in the decision making. The article’s main contributions are: i) conception and development of a computational reasoning tool that supports the process of dental implantation; ii) the interactivity in the development of surgical planning through a three-dimensional geometric model of the dental arch; iii) the reduction of surgical time.

In this article the measurement and generation of 3D models of various vehicles, on which significant design changes had to be made, is described. In order to make the required design changes on the original vehicle, a 3D model of the vehicle had to be created. Therefore, the original vehicle had to be measured in order to create the CAD model of the vehicle. The surface of such complex objects and specific points on the object can be digitized using various optical measuring systems. Based on gathered digital measuring data and via specialized software packages, 3D CAD models of the vehicle or models of specific part of the vehicle can be created. The obtained models represent a good basis for design interventions and various analyses and simulation tasks required for making good decisions regarding the design changes on the vehicle. For those purposes, two measuring systems were used: TRITOP and ATOS. The ATOS system was also used to digitize serial production cars in order to modify them or to use their parts in new products. The use of such measuring system and 3D modelling and analysis tool is allowing the engineers to find better design solutions.

The product development process within the philosophy of concurrent engineering (CE) brings expressive results reducing the project’s time and on the final costs and as a result strengthens the complete product life cycle. In the light of the absolute and relative growth of elderly and persons with special needs in the coming years, it is noticeable that the area of product development can promote benefits and consequently it becomes a strong ally in the design of the products that can integrate persons with reduced mobility into the society. This article presents a case study with the aim of delineating a product accessible to the largest number of customers using a conceptual framework that addresses the concepts and tools of the Integrated Product Development Process in the CE environment and the Assistive Technology (AT) definitions. The AT seeks to help persons with reduced functional ability or as support for persons with special needs to realize some activities. It is proposed a design of a menu with functions attributed to a cell phone that would be accessible to all users including persons with visual disabilities.

Rapid advancing information technology (IT) has significantly improved the efficiency and effectiveness of capturing consumers’ concerns of a product and increased the importance of its role in new product development (NPD). To ride on this trend, this work proposes an approach that aims at establishing an axiomatic product conceptualization system (APCS) to meet the demand of consumer-oriented product concept development. The proposed prototype APCS comprises three modules, namely, knowledge elicitation module using laddering technique; knowledge representation module using design knowledge hierarchy (DKH); and knowledge synthesis module using restricted Coulomb energy (RCE) neural network. Accordingly, this system offers a method of making design decisions via a web-based data mining product conceptualization approach. A case study on golf wood club design is used for system illustration.

Owing to the rapid changing customer needs and much shorter product life cycle than ever before, employing more efficient and flexible approaches for product concept development has become an imperative for a successful product. In this work, a customer requirements elicitation and management system (CREAMS) is proposed to effectively support product conceptualization decisions by integrating various multidisciplinary requirements and concerns. A CREAMS prototype that comprises two-modules has been proposed for the purpose of eliciting and managing customer requirements for developing product concepts. During the process of customer requirements elicitation, the web-based survey is conducted to obtain customer information. The intelligent agent (IA), which comprises a pattern recognition engine and a query engine, is employed for further customer requirements evaluation and management. The system has been illustrated using a case study on the design of golf wood club head.

The changes of living society and progress of electronic technology have made consumer requirements become variable and marketed products much competitive. The trend of product design has also changed to design for mass customization. The design for mass customization is based on different design suits for different customer requirements. To enhance the effectiveness of customized product design, the research develops an efficient way on identifying potential customer preference and requirements at the conceptual stage of product design. The development procedure integrated techniques including morphological analysis and back-propagation neural network so that the system can closely match consumer requirements. An electronic viewfinder interchangeable lens (EVIL) camera is chosen as a case to explore the feasibility of the research. The results will assist the designer to build a customized product form design that can identify product parameters based on particular consumer preference and convert customer requirements into quantifiable data of product form.

Value Stream Mapping (VSM) tool helps in identifying critical time lag factors in process functioning; a major deterrent in process efficiency. This research focuses on value stream mapping applications to restructure the service provision criteria in public sector organization in Pakistan. A public sector organization is evaluated for constraint effects and proposes the lean thinking strategy for optimization. Data components include receipts, passed and rejected bills and number of days for disposing of bill; collected and evaluated. Pareto analysis and cause & effect diagram are established to measure the roots and intensity of problems. Moreover, process capability is structured to assess the process performance and trend. Results exhibit that the suitable cataloguing necessitate for improvement, hence lean thinking approach is adopted to illustrate waste free processes; valuable for organizations. Optimization strategy is presented to enhance the performance of the process in concurrent engineering environment.

Each computing system requires a platform that allows software to run. Each platform’s programming environment reflects a relevant abstraction, and usually the type and quality of the abstraction implies the complexity of problems we are able to solve. The Service ORiented Computing EnviRonment (SORCER) targets service abstractions for transdisciplinary complexity with support for distributed high performance computing. SORCER service commands are expressed in an Exertion-Oriented Language (EOL) in concert with two other languages. In this paper event-driven design space exploration is presented using these languages. A nonlinear optimization-programming example is described using the federation of services. The design service requestor collaborating with a space explorer, optimization model, and optimizer services in the network defines the service-oriented design space exploration.

At the Institute of Air Transportation Systems of the German Aerospace Centre (DLR), methods for collaborative design are systematically developed and assessed. These collaborative design approaches are used to gain knowledge on the overall air transportation system. A collaborative working environment–the Integrated Design Laboratory (IDL) is established. It forms an experimental technical platform for integrating the competences of disciplinary experts within DLR. Within the laboratory, technical solutions, collaboration methodologies and organisation of teamwork are provided and evaluated to enhance multimodal communication between specialists. In this paper, experiences from previous DLR projects as well as observations on similar facilities are used to identify research areas. In a pilot study, requirements for the design room are laid out. The initial setup of the laboratory is presented, after which a research roadmap for enhancing collaborative design at DLR is presented.

Today’s product development is defined by the complexity in products, processes and a global collaboration. The ability to synchronize processes like Systems Engineering and Mechanical/Electrical Engineering running in parallel into an aligned and transparent value-stream is a key success factor for industry to address the concurrent, iterative and multidisciplinary challenges of future aircraft programs. In practice, a lack of seamless and harmonized processes and tools, hinder an efficient virtual product development. Thus the problems should be considered from multiple perspectives. Therefore this paper presents a multidimensional Framework to enhance collaboration and synchronization between separated disciplines on the dimensions Communication, Processes, Tools and Product Data, embedding the emerging methods of Model-based Engineering and Product Lifecycle Management. The framework helps to make complex multidimensional dependencies between engineering disciplines more explicit to engineers, thus guides process improvement activities and helps to apply limited state of the art solutions aligned towards the overall goal of synchronization of disciplines.

This work proposes the creation of a holistic and transdisciplinary process model view, named Process Science & Technology, for the unification and integration of concepts and techniques originated in various disciplines that deal with complex discrete event processes descriptions. Building upon this unified model view, the work draws some guidelines for the development of a systematic approach to conduct Process Science & Technology studies, named a Framework for Process Science & Technology, aiming at the improvement of the complete product lifecycle management process in Concurrent Engineering projects. The approach is demonstrated by means of a study case applied to the service processes for integration and testing of advanced technological products provided by the Laboratory of Integration and Testing of the Space Research Institute (LIT/INPE).

This work aims to propose the Model-Based Systems Concurrent Engineering (MBSCE) approach. MBSCE is the formalized application of modeling to support integrated and concurrent development of a complex product and their performing organizations. It takes in consideration, from the outset, life cycle process and organization requirements which, together with the product specific requirements, drive the product development process. Several modeling languages have been designed for general-purpose systems and general systems engineering, each with its semantics and notation. Typically, a System Modeling Language (SML) provides tools for representing a system in both textually and visually. A key to successful model construction is choosing the appropriate SML. Currently, systems engineers use a wide range of modeling languages, tools and techniques. SysML, an initiative between OMG and INCOSE, is intended to unify the diverse modeling languages currently used by systems engineers in similar manner to how UML unified the modeling languages used in software industry. Therefore, this work proposes initially Systems Concurrent Engineering to be modeled by OMG’s SysML.

In fields such as space, aeronautics, mobility, telecommunications, banking, or defense, systems are becoming increasingly complex, consisting of a network of interrelated and interacting components, with significant heterogeneity and diverse lifecycles. The need for continuous changes in product, process and organization in order to keep manufacturing business competitiveness, make these segments seek to apply methods to innovate and develop their complex products and services with lower costs, improved productivity and quality, and in less lead-time. This paper presents the integrated and concurrent development of a complex product and their performing organizations with System Concurrent Engineering approach that performs stakeholder analysis, requirements analysis, functional analysis and implementation architecture analysis, simultaneously, for the product, its life cycle processes and their performing organization at all levels of the product hierarchy. In order to demonstrate the System Concurrent Engineering approach and the methodology, this paper shows a Satellite Container (Mechanical Ground Support Equipments – MGSE) as example of a complex systems development.

The stakeholder analysis is the starting point in Systems Engineering. The outcome of the analysis affects the whole development effort until the validation phase; hence the importance and criticality in understanding the stakeholder needs, which represent the problem to be solved. This paper aims to propose a Process of Stakeholder Analysis using cognitive mapping through a practical example of its application. The cognitive approach proposed brings some benefits needed to give completeness to the stakeholder analysis. Some of these benefits are the graphic visualization of the problem, a structured elicitation of root needs and its rationale.

The Soft Systems Methodology

(

SSM) was developed to deal with soft systems, systems in which the human components predominate. Any kind of software is a hard system, since technical factors predominate in it. But when the software is a component of an Information System its success depends heavily on soft aspects. This paper analyzes the potential contribution of SSM to Software Engineering in order to propose a method to support requirements elicitation for the development of Information System that helps to understand and consider the human, social and political factors that will influence the system success. A real situation of the Integration and Testing Laboratory (LIT) of INPE (Brazilian Institute for Space Research) was used to perform the study and to exemplify the use of the proposed method.

Concurrent engineering of system parts with diverging requirements can be extremely challenging. One example are mixed-criticality systems that integrate hard real-time software for safety–critical functionality and general purpose software providing a sophisticated user interface. The automotive industry, as well as other industrial branches, has a growing need to integrate consumer electronics applications (e.g. Linux based) and safety-relevant applications requiring an underlying hard real-time operating system. Some established concepts for mixed-criticality systems can be found in the avionics domain. This paper demonstrates that the principles behind these concepts are a dead end regarding innovations requiring a close interoperation. The second contribution of the paper is to present a different solution approach as a potential remedy that allows the different developer groups (hard real-time and standard IT) to retain their attitude to software development. The core of the novel approach is a worst-case execution time (WCET) directed OS service, which could serve as solution pattern for further problems in mixed-criticality systems.

This work proposes the adoption of a formal approach for the software models construction in a concurrent system engineering environment, before an architectural design and code is created. The approach is intended to cause the developers, from the outset, to consider all elements of the software product life cycle, including not only functional requirements but also significant safety requirements. We explore whether we can use existing Event-B composition and refinement techniques and the tooling environment Rodin Platform in a concurrent engineering development. Such approach was applied to a case study of a flight software system and, according to the results to date, the approach has shown to be promising for safety–critical systems development. The main contribution of this work is to offer an efficient evaluation of the software system models that are concurrently designed with other system’s components in the engineering space, uncovering design problems that can be fixed earlier and improving the system’s trustworthiness. Final observations include some lessons learnt, strengths, and limitations of such approach.

Cloud computing is the next step in the continued evolution of information systems. Cloud computing allows consumers to choose what service they want, how the services will be delivered, and provides usage based. The resource pooling and rapid provisioning of cloud services allow providers to more efficiently supply these resources. This results in the consumers’ needs being better met while at the same time using fewer resources (both physical assets and energy). To achieve these goals a better understanding of the implications of cloud computing along with interoperability, portability, and security standards is needed. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has been tasked to help drive adoption of cloud computing by federal agencies through the identification and resolution of high-priority interoperability, portability and security issues.

The development of web 2.0 increases the call for agile and simple business process support. SOA (Service oriented Architecture) provides companies a new model to build their IT applications around their business processes and to combine them dynamically with the services of partner companies. Moreover cloud computing offers new business models and deployment opportunities to support adaptive and scalable execution environment. However, to provide services collaboration from several companies, the security policy associate to each company must be respected. So, the Business Process (BP) provides by these companies services inter-connections should be adapted to the security policy of each company and to the platform where it will be deployed. This leads to propose a new platform based on MDE (Model-Driven Engineering) approach to allow companies to build and deploy safely their BP in the Cloud environments.

Companies keep trying various strategies in order to reduce the cost of their computer systems. The current trend is to see “everything as a service”. By benefiting from the advantages of Cloud Computing, we can set up a robust collaborative platform for product development in networked enterprises. Stakeholders can connect to the collaborative platform and use its proposed services. These services allow an effective collaboration with better price, quality of service ratio. In parallel, we focus on interoperability issues in collaborative product development environments. All these techniques ensure better systems integration and tasks parallelization for the concurrent engineering.

The globalised world has entered the service era, where an enterprise is connected to the entire world, producing and consuming services using the internet. Virtualisation and service provisioning are paradigms that rule the interoperation of the world today. However, this interoperability mostly relies on a set of agreed message syntax exchanges, agreements that are fragile and limited in their scope, and it lacks a proper framework that can manage the sustainability of a networked Enterprise Interoperability (EI) environment. After presenting the problem and the research questions concerned with cloud-based EI, the paper presents the actual practices and research challenges on EI identified needs, addressing ontology, negotiation and cloud-based aspects for sustainability in EI. Then it proposes an ontology-enriched framework for cloud-based EI, and discusses on its validation in an industrial scenario.

Software Industry is one of most evolutionary industry worldwide. Many changes and advancements have been experienced in this field but only some are proven to be successful. The Agile process is one of them. Though in local industry this term is not well established with its true essences, however it is implemented in a way that some of its principles and values are accepted and some are not. This paper is written in context of distributed software development to underline the challenges and benefits faced by Agile process in this area. The paper describes briefly about the agile process, its importance and its comparison with other existing technologies. To prove its benefits on local industry the paper explains a case study of a software development company; trying to convert its processes on Agile process. The company has first identified its problem areas and to cope up with rapidly changing software demands the company converting its processes to Agile Software process model and find out the better results in terms of reduction in software lifecycle, lesser rework and speedy development of software prototype due to enhanced communication at all levels.

Manufacturing industry has adopted sophisticated software for designing products in 3D and managing the product information using product lifecycle management systems. Simultaneously, the informal communication that is happening during the different stages of product design is increasingly happening using electronic devices such as email, instant messaging and teleconferencing. Even though product information, for example technical data or CAD models, is efficiently managed in the product lifecycle managements systems, management of informal communication is often poorly implemented: information contained in informal communication is often lost or difficult to access. This paper describes a method and a prototype for managing informal communication, based on 3D mediated communication.

We present GREAT (GRaphical tool for rules Editing and AudiTing), an approach and a tool for graphical business rules management that we designed and developed. This collaborative Web-based application with rich user interface enables easy creation and editing of business rules. Relevant features are (1) the ability to define templates of business rules with various levels of granularity and of rule elements, which can be further reused; (2) the ability to create configurable user profiles from a broad range of permissions, which combined with business rules templates, suits the tool to users with different goals and levels experience; (3) the automatic versioning of business rules. We validated our approach with real-world business rules provided by a telecommunications company. The easy to use graphical environment empowers the business experts to create the rules themselves, rather than having to resort to Information Technology professionals.