Global Product Development

To minimize the greenhouse effect caused by emission of CO

2

, many automobile manufacturers are developing battery-powered automobiles that typically use re-chargeable lithium polymer (or ion) batteries. However, the future of these battery-powered electric cars is less than certain. The re-chargeable lithium batteries are heavy and expensive with a limited life. Furthermore, Earth has only about 10 million tons of lithium, enough to put one battery system in each vehicle in use today worldwide. This chapter presents a new design concept for an alternate electric car – On-Line Electric Vehicle (OLEV). OLEV draws its electric power from underground electric coils without using any mechanical contact. The maximim efficiency of power transmission over a distance of 17 cm is 72%. OLEV has a small battery, which enables the vehicle to travel on roads without the underground electric coil. Batteries are recharged whenever OLEV draws electric power from the underground coils and thus, do not require expensive separate charging stations. The infrastructure cost of installing and maintaining OLEV is less than those required for other versions of electric vehicles. This chapter presents the overall design concept of OLEV.

Collaborative production among multiple enterprises is inevitable for complex product development, typically in aeronautical and astronautical engineering. There are more complex links among product design, manufacturing process and production supply chain in that area. In order to achieve their interoperation and collaboration, it is critical to transmit information between processes correctly and in good time. An initial complete product definition in design is a key to contribute to this purpose. This chapter presents the impact of process planning and supply chain design integration on the design process from three perspectives: design modelling, design methodology and design environment. A service-based collaborative framework is constructed as novel design environment for design process. A unified product information model and model-based information representation are the basis of design. And the design methodologies of design for manufacturing, design for supply chain, and design validation by simulation are adopted. The effect of the three phases as well as the integration of product design, process planning and supply chain design is discussed to sustain lifecycle information integration and consistency throughout product development processes.

The analysis of the factors linked to the life cycle of a product shows the need of the integration of the actors acting in this cycle and of their different cultures. For such integration, the concurrent engineering has to use a multi-view cooperative integrated design modeller taking into account a product model and an activity model. This modeller must be linked with a knowledge management system. This chapter presents three examples of industrial application of integrated design in the sectors of automotive, metallurgy and wood furniture’s.

Adaptable design is a new design approach for developing adaptable products to satisfy various requirements of customers. Since the adaptable design method can be used to replace multiple products with different functions with a single adaptable product, this method can reduce the costs to achieve the required functions, thereby improving the competitiveness of products. In addition, due to the decreased number of products, the waste created at the end of the product’s life cycle is also reduced, thereby decreasing the impact on the environment. This paper examines the nature and characteristics of the adaptable design method by comparing it with existing design methodologies. This paper also provides details on the basic elements in adaptable design, including rationalized functions, modular adaptable architecture, adaptable interfaces, and adaptability. Research and industrial applications are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed adaptable design method.

Design research has developed strongly in recent years, but it has perhaps not lived up to its early promise. In particular, industrial impact has been patchy, and impact on public policy has been poor. This paper argues that the design research community is multi-faceted. A consequence of its breadth is that it is divided, to its cost, along disciplinary and geographical lines. An overview of the design research landscape is presented, and proposals are made for the diverse traditions of the research community to come together to create an integrated view on design research, in particular for industry and the wider community.

The life span of artifacts can be viewed as a continuum. At one extreme, disposable materials, components and products go from cradle to grave with very little life in between. At the other extreme, complex systems and infrastructure can stand for decades, centuries, or millennia, slowly evolving based on performance and changing stakeholder needs. This work follows the development of the Charles River Dam in Boston, Massachusetts from its inception to the present in order to explore the design issues of complex systems over the entire life cycle.

All designers and all designs exist and operate in a world with time. It influences all that we create and all that we do. Yet, the role of time in many formal design theories has not been adequately addressed. This work explores some of the issues associated with coupling and conflict in time in formal design theories. The current treatment of time, coupling, and conflict in three formal design theories is reviewed. Different types of time varying designs and time-dependent conflict and coupling are discussed. Seven important characteristics of time-dependent conflict are identified. Finally, a number of options for incorporating time into the conceptual design matrix are presented and their relative merits are discussed.

The purpose of this chapter is to use semantic technology to represent the knowledge for product maintenance. Companies are beginning to understand the importance of utilising an effective approach to manage existing knowledge in order to increase their intellectual capital. However, one of the main constraints that have hindered the solution in resolving technical problems has been the efficient access to expertise. Therefore, there is need for enhancing the management and maintenance of knowledge through a semantic based approach. This research project adopts a qualitative research approach and a five-phase research methodology. This research project has highlighted that semantic technology enhances the reusability, flexibility and maintainability of knowledge and its management.

Product development is highly focussed on the “value add to cost” within product generation by increasing efficiency in the physical product generation. Product testing or manufacturing activities are performed off-shore in dependency on the cost. This chapter states the importance of stretching the view within product development to the early stage in the development process where products are defined. Within this phases the corpus of product development costs are determined. In the sensitisation and support of involved employees and stakeholders for the operational work in the early development phases lies high potential for increasing the quality of the creational works’ outcome. An approach as a guideline for the early stage of product development is described and ICT tools to support located and dislocated teams within their work are introduced.

Sustainable development forces companies towards eco-design. It often appears to be a constraint which does not encourage a calling into question of the product or service. It is also necessary to surpass this procedure by integrating the notion of creativity while keeping the coherence of the social and environmental aspects through an eco-innovation initiative. This chapter first presents the “eco-innovation” concept and a review of some eco-innovation tools, in order to identify their characteristics, and then, the paper describes a newly developed tool, “ecoASIT”, which is an eco-innovation tool based on a “closed world” notion and which implies that responsible innovation does not have to introduce new elements in the world of the problem.

This chapter describes an optimized methodology for fast, high-quality design of individual customized products in the field of mechanical engineering. Furthermore, it explains the important role of the configuration in the early design phases. The use of dependencies systems is suggested as a solution for breaking down the product complexity, as well as for the visualization of the product parameters and for the methodical solving of goal conflicts in the configuration process.

The purpose of our research is to identify the levers, the obstacles and potential variables that help to create a more robust process for integrating innovations into vehicle development projects. The ultimate aim of our work is to help to increase the numbers of innovations providing high added value for the customer that are assimilated into future vehicles.The analysis that we present is the result of an in-depth diagnostic study (40 persons consulted, 80 hof interviews), feedback from five vehicle development projects and detailed analysis of three innovation projects.

The issue of requirements of eco-design tools appears regularly in eco-design literature. Helping actors from design teams to structure their practice of eco-design is indeed a key topic in engineering design. So far authors have high-lighted various aspects of these context-related requirements. Our approach, based on actual utilization of existing tools, raises the following question: what is a good eco-design tool? How can it be characterized? Our original contribution is firstly to cluster requirements in two structured categories taking into account process and results on the one hand, cognitive and social aspects of eco-design practice on the other hand. Requirements are tested with experts in academia on four eco-design tools. In order to analyse how requirements match different tools, a specific framework is also created. Objective evaluation by the researcher is combined with subjective perception of experts. First conclusions about assessment of creative outcomes, usability of tools and confidence in results are presented.

Design for Environment (DfE) is an approach to design where all the environmental impacts of a product are considered over the entire life cycle of a product. Most DfE tools are conceptual in nature, and there is little adoption of these in industry. This chapter discusses the development of a holistic framework that should help in both generation and evaluation of environmentally friendly product life cycle proposals. The overall approach is to investigate literature to analyse the existing guidelines, methods, tools and methodologies for environmentally friendly product design, in order to identify the requirements for a holistic framework for design to reduce the environmental impact of a product lifecycle proposal. An ideal framework to satisfy these requirements is proposed.

This chapter presents a geometric declarative model where objects and constraints are represented by a set of vectors in order to establish the specifications and to solve 2D and 3D problems. In this declarative model, vectors are not defined by their usual Cartesian coordinates but by their respective scalar products. Then a metric tensor characterizes the geometric object. To solve the problem, a new method based on the point displacement gives the final object satisfying all the specifications asked by the designer.

A highly effective product development is an essential prerequisite for the success of manufacturing enterprises. So, to produce mechanisms with guarantee of quality, delay and low cost, design has to take into account geometrical variations and to deal with it through Geometric Variations Management (GVM). The objective is to develop a method which studies GVM as the product evolves. The designer would be able to modify the technical solution without a total rebuilding of the tolerancing study. To do so, models of the parts are defined for each design stage, method and tolerance specifications are adapted to these representations. Graphical tools which have to deal with different types of data are developed in this method.

Due to the development of science and technology the requirements of customers and users for a product are more and more tight and higher. The satisfaction of these, such as quality, reliability, robustness and cost of the product plays an important role in the context of global and concurrent economy. However, there are many variation sources during the product life cycle such as material defects, manufacturing imperfection, different use conditions of the product, etc. It can make the designed product not to meet fully the requirements of the users. Thus, we propose, in this chapter, several analysis methods based on data mining tools in order to analyze the result of performance simulation of the product taking into account the geometrical deviations generated during its life cycle. These methods allow classifying and identifying factors that influence on performance of the designed product. With these methods, the product designers can analyze the “real” performance under geometrical variation sources generated in the practical environment. Moreover, the proposed methods can be used to transfer back the result of the “real” performance analysis of the product to the manufacturer and product designer in order to obtain a robust product.

When planning and developing an intra-logistical facility, a multitude of stakeholder requirements need to be considered and implemented into solutions. This is essential to satisfy customer needs. To ensure adequate requirements management, at first the requirements have to be gathered and structured afterwards. For this purpose, a multidimensional model has been created as part of the German Collaborative Research Centre 696, sub-project A1. This model allows structuring the requirements regarding intra-logistical facilities. Based on an analysis of existing structuring methods and the identification of the stakeholders of intra-logistical facilities excerpts of the model are presented in this chapter.

This chapter proposes to investigate the use of a coordinate free approach for the mapping of geometrical requirement along a product life cycle. The geometry of the studied assembly is represented using a Gram matrix that is issued from a parametric model constituted of points and vectors. This parametric model is instanced for all relevant phase of the product life cycle. The calculation of instanced parameters is based on part deformation due to changing operating conditions. This calculation is carried out thanks to existing theoretical techniques. The application presented in this paper is constituted of a simple 3D case composed of 3 articulated bars disposed as a tetrahedron and subjected to some thermal expansion.

Objectives in product development are abstract, thus ambiguous and are subject to interpretation of designing engineers. A throughout the process continuous modeling of objectives, can lead to a directed design problem solving. It is a common approach to control design processes through the definition of objectives. Any design activity can then be directed to the fulfillment of the objectives. This works as long as the objectives remain presents in the everyday activity of designers. Using the Contact and Channel Model (C&CM) for referencing the objectives to the designed objects gives a structure to the Product design process

Product development was deeply modified by globalisation. New practises to ease remote collaborative work are expected. Many methods and tools were developed for this objective in a fragmented vision depending of the usage contexts. The computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) community defined tools dedicated to generic collaboration without specialisation about a specific business. Under this classification, whiteboards are dedicated to synchronous remote work around unstructured sketches. On another point of view the design community developed new shared models for structured information about the product. This chapter proposes the integration of both in order to create whiteboards dedicated to technical business activities.

This chapter describes the advantages of using multi-user collaborative design tools within product development, and what it takes to simultaneously work with multiple users on one virtual tool. Initially, it is explained why collaboration is essential during product development and how current virtual tools fail at facilitating and stimulating it. An introduction is given to multi-touch interfaces that offer the opportunity to create multi-user collaborative design tools, followed by an explanation of the most important challenges in creating multi-user virtual design tools.

This chapter presents a state-of-the-art of design from the main definition to the more specific aspects of product design. We focus on communication problems and social aspects of the design process in a collaborative context. Afterward, we concentrate on the decision making problem in order to determine a work hypothesis in the mind-mapping area. In this chapter, we report the development of our idea which results in the conception of an interactive mind-mapping technique on a multi-touch table, called mindflow.

The key dynamic in supporting an efficient and effective new product introduction is the nature of the exchange of information between the functions of manufacturing engineering and design engineering. This chapter describes a study of this dynamic with particular regard to the role of manufacturing engineering in developing robust production process for the design intent. This study reports related work in this area and establishes the views of participants concerning product introduction process at a major aerospace manufacturer. It is found that integration between the manufacturing and design function driven by communication of qualitative data has brought benefit to the process in terms of quality cost and time. However, a stronger definition regarding the quality and usability of manufacturing process knowledge communicated to the design function is required for more effective and efficient new product introduction in the shortening timescales of the changing industrial environment.

Multi-process manufacturing calls for various competences and expertise. STEP-NC object-oriented approach proposes to unify several manufacturing processes in a common data model. Furthermore, CNC controllers are fully integrated into CAD/CAM/CNC numerical data chain. Thus, next generation of CNC machine tools promises to be more open, intelligent and interoperable. This chapter first proposes a simulation and optimization model for multi-process manufacturing environments by using STEP-NC. Then, a practical implementation of the developed concepts is carried out on the manufacturing equipments of the laboratory.

Engineering design approach are currently CAD-centred design process. Manufacturing information is selected and assessed very late in the design process and above all as a reactive task instead of being proactive to lead the design choices. DFM approaches are therefore assessment methods that compare several design alternatives and not real design approaches at all. Main added value of this research work concerns the use of a product-process interface model to jointly manage both the product and the manufacturing data in a proactive DFM way. The DFM synthesis approach and the interface model are presented via the description of the DFM software platform.

Design for configuration provides an efficient and effective means to realise the product variety. This chapter tackles the product modelling in advanced CAD systems for product configuration using an UML (Unified Modelling Language) approach and a computational model. The introduction of fuzziness to capture the subjective nature of the design for configuration permits to consider different use cases in the early conceptual design phase of the product. Furthermore, the building of multiple fuzzy models, which correspond to the multiple views of a configurable product, permits to propose both the functional architecture and physical architecture to configure a product. Then, the computational model permits to generate a solution which satisfies the customer requirement and the constraints of different process views. The association of the computational model and the CAD parametric model allows the generation of different configurations in a CAD system. An application shows the potential of the proposed approach.

This chapter relates to the issue of the development of a database of design methods with emphasis on the methodology used to build it. The context of this research is the elaboration of a guide which helps designers in their choice of design methods. The chapter presents the long-term objective of this research and details the main challenges in the development of the database. It also discusses the methodologies used by previous authors and analyses the results of their implementation. The chapter concludes that the development of a new methodology is necessary in order to effectively develop a representative set of design methods.

Mechatronical products integrate components that are developed by different fields of engineering and combine them in order to provide new functionalities. The main challenge is the ever increasing complexity and the required degree of interdisciplinarity. The joint research project MIKADO adressed this demand by integrating domain specific development methods and tools into a more systems-engineering-oriented approach. Special emphasis has been placed on the early phases of product development in order to facilitate an early coordination between mechanical, electronical and software engineers and to provide them with easy means for the functional verification of virtual product models.

This chapter presents an approach for the automatic combination of different models in order to build-up a virtual prototype automatically. Semantic Web techniques are used for that purpose; aim of the work has been to verify if Semantic Web techniques are suitable for that purpose. Therefore, the models that need to be combined become semantically annotated. The items of 3D models and multi-body systems are presented, which need to be annotated in order to facilitate an automatic combination of these two types of models. To combine them the relations between both models need to be identified. A reasoning mechanism is presented that indentifies these relations. The automatic combination of models simplifies the build-up of virtual prototypes. In future, it facilitates complex virtual prototypes that consist of multiple models. Due to the addition of a semantic to the models, the virtual prototype is denoted as Semantic Virtual Prototype.

PLM is today a reality for mechanical SMEs. Some companies easily implement PLM systems but it is more hazardous for SMEs. This chapter aims to explain why some of them do not success to integrate PLM systems. This analysis is based on the needs of the SMEs in the mechanical domain, the processes that respond to those needs and the actual PLM software functionalities. The proposition of a typology of those companies and the responses of those needs by PLM processes will be explain through the applications of a demonstrator applying appropriate generic data model and modelling framework.

There is an international imperative to reduce energy consumption and its associated gas emissions. Such reduction can be achieved in the electrical/electronic consumer products sector through the development of sustainable products. However, there is lack of information, knowledge, and integrated design tools for producing such products that embrace real sustainable characteristics. This paper presents a framework that integrates the various aspects of sustainable product design. It incorporates a set of guidelines, methodologies and tools for enabling the development of sustainable products. The proposed integrated tools will help designers at the early stages of design to bring forward sustainable electrical and electronic products and bridge the gap between engineering and ecology.

The increased use of innovative components like electronics is a present trend in several branches of industry. These components are characterized by short innovation cycles, but are often assembled in primary products, which have a comparatively long life span. The post-series supply is therefore a relevant problem. Today the focus of product development lies on small expenses in the serial production, a consideration of life cycle costs with regard to the post-series supply does not take place. This behavior often results in high financial burden. Before this background the product development with consideration of the requirements of the post-series-supply offers high potentials. To reduce the complexity of this problem a methodical approach is needed.

A set-based approach to design of mechanical systems is presented in the following text. Set-based technique allows keeping multiple alternatives alive during the design process while narrowing through the possibilities towards the most optimal solution. Using the Quantifier notion from QCSP (Quantified Constraint Satisfaction Problem), a formal expression for the problem has been developed. An algorithm using QCSP transformation through interval analysis has also been developed. In order to demonstrate the approach, an example of design of rigid flange coupling with a variable number of bolts and a choice of bolts from ISO M standard has been resolved and demonstrated.

Faced with increasing complexity in the global economy, a timely and accurate operation of the market demands an accelerated harmonization of customer and manufacturer perspective in the quotation phase through product configuration systems. An approach for knowledge-based product configuration through the integration of experience and knowledge from the product use phase is presented below. The goal of this approach is to enable a faster and software-controlled harmonization of the different customer’s and the manufacturer’s points of view during the pre-contract phase. Therefore a case-based reasoning method was developed to be integrated in a rule-based product configuration system. It allows a faster ascertainment of customer needs and thereby provides accurate and complete configuration of the provided products.

Materials selection is one of the most important phases in the design of a product. In recent years there have been several methods to help designers in materials selection. Several factors such as the environmental impact of the products have been increasingly valued by the society in general, which has been a drive to include environmental analyses in materials selections methods. The recently arisen methodology Life Cycle Engineering provides just an answer to these needs. In this chapter the Life Cycle Engineering (LCE) methodology is applied to a simple case study – a clothes peg, within the objective of illustrate the potentialities of introducing LCE in early design phases. LCE is based on three dimensions of analysis: Life Cycle Cost, Life Cycle Assessment and a technical evaluation. Life Cycle Cost is an economic analysis of the product throughout its life. Life Cycle Assessment is an evaluation of environmental impacts caused during the product lifetime, and technical evaluation consists in the evaluation of the candidate materials based on the functions or the requirements of the product. The purpose of this study was to select candidate materials and to design the manufacturing process for a clothes peg applying the LCE methodology. The design alternatives were therefore evaluated based on these three dimensions of analysis. A decision making methodology called Multi-attribute Utility Analysis was used for the final selection of the best material and process. This analysis is based on the consumers’ opinion, that in this particular application rely on three factors: the market price, the environmental impact and the quality of the product. The proposed methodology integrates a life cycle analysis (LCE) with the value given by the costumer to each dimension considering a specific product.

This chapter addresses the dimensional synthesis of parallel kinematics machines. A multiobjective optimization problem is proposed in order to determine optimum structural and geometric parameters of parallel manipulators. The proposed approach is applied to the optimum design of a three-degree-of-freedom planar parallel manipulator in order to minimize the mass of the mechanism in motion and to maximize its regular shaped workspace.

The paper describes a methodology to support business process re-engineering by mapping product requirements to product development phases in order to analyze their contribution to value creation. The methodology has been already validated by the authors in different industrial sectors through real case studies [1], that were all characterized by well established business processes, needing improvements to preserve their competitiveness in the marketplace. In this chapter the effectiveness of the methodology in identifying process criticalities is tested with regards to industrial processes experiencing under capacities in satisfying the market demand as well as concerning not yet established business ideas. The task is performed by considering the wood pellet production process as a case study.

Early design is a critical stage in product and service development. The choices made during this period influence the final spread and acceptance of the artifact and therefore must be made in the best possible manner. Different aspects must be taken into account during decision making such as value, risk awareness, environmental impacts, etc. The present work studies value in engineering projects using dimensional analysis and its integration in the decision making framework while putting an accent on value considerations.

A global set-up of production sites and suppliers in an increasingly globalised world provides huge opportunities for companies, such as the development of new markets or the reduction of production costs. In spite of these advantages and the desire of companies to make full use of them, global production has not been mastered so far and its potential has not yet been fully tapped. Global production often results in quality issues or unexpectedly high costs. The technical features of the product to be manufactured have a major impact on whether global production will be successful or not. This chapter aims at presenting an approach to tapping the potential of low-cost countries by tailoring product design to local needs and, at the same time, to reducing entrepreneurial risks.

Innovations often depend on a new technology. Between the fully developed technology and the beginning of marketing efforts there exists a methodical gap. The utilization of the technology can vary about a lot of business lines, the market is totally unknown. In this case, a systematic methodology is essential to tell engineers and marketing people how to find additional application cases of the new technology in different business lines and prepare marketing activities. The result is a basis for drawing up a market analysis and a specification for a development project.

Nowadays is the era of mass customization which satisfies the more demanding customers who seek uniqueness. Nevertheless it is not that evident to put in place such a strategy, many difficulties have to be handled at first. Products should be designed for mass customization, and then they should be manufactured and delivered specifically for a specific customer. Therefore an efficient information sharing and knowledge management are crucial for MC, for the main issue of MC is to correctly communicate customer desires. This article discusses how KM is an enabler for MC in the light of a European project DOROTHY.

Ontology has been identified as a feasible modeling solution for rich design information and knowledge representation. From previous studies, the applications of ontology in design engineering have shown promising progress. This chapter provides a critical review of the recent achievements in utilizing ontology for design information and knowledge management. The applications of ontology in the three major categories are explicitly discussed. Most importantly, a number of research issues concerning the application of ontology in design engineering have been identified and suggested. Finally, based on the current state of research, a few promising future research directions are also briefly discussed.

Problems related to knowledge sharing in product design and manufacture, for supporting automated decision-making procedures, are associated with the inability to communicate the full meaning of concepts and their intent within and across system boundaries. This chapter proposes a Semantic Manufacturing Interoperability Framework (SMIF) to support interoperable design and manufacture knowledge at the semantic level. The framework uses a heavyweight ontological underpinning and provides a logic-based approach for the reconciliation of domain semantics. The framework has been implemented and the important findings have been documented in this chapter.

Innovation is mandatory for the survival of industrial companies more than ever subjected to competition. For this reason it is crucial to help the designers to innovate faster and more efficiently than competitors. The aim of our study is to propose an approach for designers to facilitate innovation in innovative design. By analyzing the multi-disciplinary literature, knowledge management (KM) is regarded as a promising approach to support innovative design. The interactions between KM and innovation have been investigated. From a human centered perspective, we model KM for innovation by focusing on the more efficient creation and use of knowledge in design. A hierarchical model is constructed for leveraging KM activities into innovation. Finally, the applicability and usefulness of our approach is demonstrated through a software prototype being tested with an industrial partner.

This research is concerned with the identification and sharing of the knowledge required during preliminary design when the manufacturing process is in development. An investigation was undertaken using a complex mechanical component with an innovative manufacturing process. The designers and manufacturing engineers involved in the preliminary design were interviewed and the data analysed. The difference in knowledge requirements depending on the domain specialism emerged as a significant finding. A schematic diagram to illustrate the knowledge interactions between the specialist domains was created. This will be used to create a methodology to facilitate the identification and sharing of manufacturing knowledge requirements.

An obstacle in current digital design and manufacturing applications is that the information is hardly shared and exchanged among application systems. From the perspective of supporting assembly information integration throughout product design and manufacturing, a unified assembly information model and its modeling scheme are proposed. The modeling scheme includes a top-down modeling approach, a three dimensional framework describing the characteristics of the model, the model definition given in Unified Modeling Language (UML) and a 3D information expression method. A prototype implementation with CATIA CAD system is introduced to illustrate the application of the model in assembly design, design for assembly (DFA) analysis, process planning, assembly simulation and inspection.

In order to optimally exploit the large amounts of engineering information stored in contemporary PLM systems, the concept of knowledge based engineering (KBE) can be considered from a PLM perspective. By eventually combining product structures and implicit semantics provided by PLM-systems on the one hand, and domain-specific standards on the other hand we believe to have identified a key enabler for KBE. As an initial step we describe a coupling of a CAD system with a semantic representation of engineering knowledge using formal ontologies. By application of automatic reasoning, engineering knowledge gained from the product structure and domain-specific standards allows us to reduce time-consuming manual work in classifying overlaps between parts in a CAD model as intentional overlaps (e.g. with gaskets) or design failures.

This chapter describes an approach to optimize the design process of adaptable products. Therefore self organizing map (SOM) is applied to support the developer. SOM is able to assess the similarity of requirement lists. Assuming that similar requirement lists lead to similar products, the SOM is able to identify the existing product, which has to be changed least to fulfill a new order. For applying SOM, the requirement lists have to be prepared in multiple steps. The requirements have to be structured, transferred into unambiguous language and they have to be quantified. In this chapter a focus is put on the quantification of the requirements.

Nowadays Aluminum extrusion die design is a critical task for improving productivity which involves with quality, time and cost. Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) method has been successfully applied to support the die design process in order to design a new die by tackling previous problems together with their solutions to match with a new similar problem. Such solutions are selected and modified to solve the present problem. However, the applications of the CBR are useful only retrieving previous features whereas the critical parameters are missing. In additions, the experience learning to such parameters are limited. This chapter proposes Artificial Neural Network (ANN) to associate the CBR in order to learning previous parameters and predict to the new die design according to the primitive die modification. The most satisfactory is to accommodate the optimal parameters of extrusion processes.

The design of industrial plants requires managing many geometrical and non geometrical data to reach a satisfactory solution in terms of costs, performance and quality. An approach is presented to support designers in the elicitation and formalization phase of the required knowledge. Then an integral prototypal software application accomplishes layout configuration tasks through a customized graphic wizard. A routing algorithm is presented to automate calculation and modelling of piping and electrical cables respecting design constraints. Cogeneration plant powered by micro gas-turbines has been chosen as test case to evaluate the proposed design method and tool.

Layout design plays an important role in the design and usability of many engineering products and systems. Because of the great complexity of most industrial layout problems, the decision of the acceptable layout is a hard and critical task since the special layout can have a significant consequence on the global performances. Thus, in order to propose to the designer an optimal spatial arrangement in a reasonable time, this chapter develops an interactive optimization strategy that is tested on the facilities layout problem of a shelter. This problem is innovative because it introduces the concept of space of accessibility

For the 2008 CIRP Design conference, we have presented a scientific article dealing with a new way of thinking our technical heritage: we would like to preserve it as a digital object. Project deals with a physical mock-up of Nantes city built in 1899 and used for the Universal exposition in France in 1900 in Paris. The heritage object is nowadays in the museum but exposed as a fish inside an aquarium. Thanks to a virtual system coupling a tactile screen with semantic research modules, 3D active screen and light pointer, it will allow the visitor to better understand the mock-up and emphasize important places of Nantes city life. However it does not mean beautiful 3D animation with nice static rendering; indeed, we create virtual mock-ups which are dynamically operating. We use CAD software and engineering simulation tools. Nowadays the global methodology has been improved: it is named Advanced Industrial Archaeology. In this communication, we will detail a new experimentation done in partnership with a French museum: the Château des Ducs de Bretagne in France. This project deals with a physical mock-up of Nantes city built in 1899 and exposed in 1900 for the World Fair that took place in Paris, France. The heritage object is nowadays in the museum but exposed as “a fish inside an aquarium”. Thanks to a virtual system coupling a tactile screen with semantic research modules, a 3D active screen and a light pointer, it will allow the visitor to better understand the mock-up and emphasize important places of the city. The mock-up represents our industrial heritage with old shipyards of Nantes.

The level of efficiency in the dissemination of knowledge within an organization is recognized as being a competitive advantage. Therefore, various means appeared in order to share it. Among the existing ways, the use of documents and files to encapsulated consistent knowledge of refined granularity (figures, words, etc.) is a well-known practice. However, the latter sometimes complicates its extraction or reuse in product re-development project. For a large company, improvement resides in the need to implement veritable design logistics covering also this knowledge of refined granularity. The purpose of this chapter is to propose a solution to support the automated sharing of this type of knowledge in the context of a product design process. This solution is based on an information system, the architecture of which will be presented and partially validated by the implementation of an application case provided by our industrial partner, Renault-DIM (Mechanical Engineering Department).

In the context of the automotive industry, OEM and suppliers are setting new processes in order to reduce the product costs and decrease development time. These new approaches affect the design process, which become today more collaborative in the globalization of the market. From several years, many new approaches using simultaneously new tools were implemented in industrial companies. The main purpose of this chapter is to introduce a new design process including the new CAD tools, which was implemented in a design office since a couple of years, and present the result of 1 year use.

Patents are gaining a growing importance as a complementary source of technical information, since the information they disclose is not accessible in scientific and technical literature. Text mining technologies are emerging as a possible solution to increase the efficiency of patent analysis activities; besides, most of the existing systems are derived from general purpose applications that marginally leverage patents peculiarities. The authors are developing algorithm and tools fully dedicated to patent mining, i.e. information extraction from patent literature. The present paper aims at the identification of relevant technical parameters for a certain domain, through the comparison of thesauri automatically extracted from the given field of application and from its complementary patent classes.

Patents are an increasingly important source of technological intelligence that companies can use to gain strategic advantage. Public databases, such as Espacenet, offer for free, available over the internet, some millions of documents with constant format and always updated. So, the answer to most of our technical questions depends on how we are able to extract crucial information from patent corpus and translate them into knowledge. A general overview on universal tools for knowledge management (bibliometric, text mining, semantic) is proposed, with the aim to highlight what problems have already been overcome and what still needs to be done, especially for TRIZ users who want to identify technical features in a text.

In this chapter, we present an approach to knowledge acquisition from patents based on our own inventive design methodology. This methodology, based on TRIZ, extends its practice to the resolution of complex problems. We have proposed an ontology of all the concepts and models used in our approach. An operative process easing knowledge acquisition, useful to the experts practicing inventive design, is based on this ontology.

The management of design rationale (DR) is an important task in design study. However, existing DR approaches are unable to discover DR from the large amount of archived design documents. It motivates us to propose a new DR representation model, ISAL (issue, solution and artifact layer), using patent documents. In this chapter, we first reviewed existing DR approaches. Then, we proposed an ISAL for DR discovery. Finally, we have conceptually evaluated ISAL and IBIS (Issue-based information system) using sample patents of inkjet printer. The results demonstrate the merits of ISAL model proposed.

Like most front-end design and problem solving methodologies, TRIZ requires users to abstract their specific system or problem, analyze it through the methodology, and, if applicable, map it back to a specific situation. A methodology and algorithm are proposed that can eliminate this subjective and arduous mapping by formalizing automatically identified, fine-grained product dimensions or Product Aspects. These Product Aspects allow for automatic product characterization, which is a key technology to enable different automated functionalities in idea generation and problem solving contexts, such as automated trend analysis and searching for similar products.

The current competitive environment push companies to take actions to improve their activities, regarding whatever their products, processes, or their organization. But how to intervene? Which could be the best measures and practices that will optimize the system performance? Also in the goal of greater overall efficiency, we evaluate the performance of collaborative design projects; we create indicators, which can drive us in the best interests, in regard of our objectives. But are they well adapted or well integrated regarding the needs of interfaces, between the company and the assessment system itself? To lay a solid foundation of the evaluation process of performance, we take as the basis the normative approach in design management, the standard ISO or AFNOR to introduce our notion of performance.

This chapter focuses on the performance evaluation of the parallel manipulators for milling of composite materials. For this application the most significant performance measurements, which denote the ability of the manipulator for the machining are defined. In this case, optimal synthesis task is solved as a multicriterion optimization problem with respect to the geometric, kinematic, kinetostatic, elastostostatic, dynamic properties. It is shown that stiffness is an important performance factor. Previous models operate with links approximation and calculate stiffness matrix in the neighborhood of initial point. This is a reason why a new way for stiffness matrix calculation is proposed. This method is illustrated in a concrete industrial problem.

This chapter presents a framework to develop comprehensive product metrics for sustainable manufacturing and perform a priority evaluation of the metrics. Recent efforts made in this direction produced a large number of influencing factors and metrics for sustainable manufacturing. It is difficult to evaluate the sustainability content of a product with a large set of metrics and there is a need to prioritize these as per the requirements of different industrial segments. The use of analytic hierarchy process to prioritize the influencing factors for electronic products is illustrated through a case study. The development of product ontology is urged as a prerequisite to the ultimate solution for product manufacturers.

Understanding the associations between skills acquisition, effort and learning is important from many points of view, but these relationships are complex and not well understood. Because these relationships are not well defined, systems analysis tools are used to represent physical and cognitive complexity characteristics, skills coupling and transfer, and learning precedence relationships. These system analysis representations for are to be used as a foundation for a skills-effort-learning framework in order to analyse behaviours for a variety of scenarios.

Lean thinking has been successfully applied to manufacturing and operations environments and many case studies and research papers have extensively been published. The same remark cannot be made for lean application to the New Product Development (NPD) process. Some efforts in Lean Product Development exist, but, until today, with the tools available, it is impossible to say if a NPD process is lean or not, and actually how much lean is. A kind of gap exists in the applicability of lean into the NPD process and this chapter aims at filling this gap, contributing to NPD performance measurement getting a leanness process. The paper proposes a Performance Measurement System, derived from the Balanced Scorecard approach, for measuring a NPD and its leanness. The proposed framework is under development within the LeanPPD European project.

This chapter proposes a framework for mechatronic systems reliability assessment at early stage of the design process. The approach provides to designers the product reliability indicator by using a semantic model that includes data related to its components characteristics and to their interactions. We focus on complex mechatronic systems consisting of sub-systems made of mechanical components, electronic devices and software modules. The paper presents two main problems to face for assessing complex products reliability: what decomposition strategy to use and how to estimate the components reliability. Then we estimate the product global reliability by considering separately mechanical components, electronic devices and the software. To test the approach, an application is outlined to estimate the reliability of a hard disk.

The paper elucidates how to connect forming process simulation with innovative measurement- and analysis equipment thereby taking into account the machine influences. Reverse Engineering use 3D-Scanning data of sheet metal forming dies. Following this paradigm, the models that simulation relies on are refined, and spotting of forming dies is subjected to a scientific analysis. That means, that with Reverse Engineering “extended process engineering” is verified at the real spotting procedure, the comparison of simulation- and measuring results is used to evaluate how close the investigated models are to reality, extending the optimisation algorithms used for springback compensation to die spotting, the modification of the die topology will be carried out automatically thanks to new software functions.

This paper focuses on Reverse Engineering (RE) in mechanical design. RE is an activity which consists in creating a full CAD model from a 3D point cloud. The aim of RE is to enable an activity of redesign in order to improve, repair or update a given mechanical part. Nowadays, CAD models obtained using modern software applications are generally “frozen” because they are sets of triangles of free form surfaces. In such models, there are not functional parameters but only geometric parameters. This paper proposes the KBRE (Knowledge Based Reverse Engineering) methodology which allows managing and fitting manufacturing and/or functional features. In this paper, specific geometric algorithms are described. They allow extracting design intents in a point cloud in order to fit these features.

This paper introduces a combined modeling method using points acquired by a touch probe on a coordinate measuring machine and an optical scanner. The optical scanning data and the high precision points captured by a touch probe are transformed into a common coordinate system through an improved iterative closet point algorithm. A data merging method is used to keep the high precision of feature surfaces and then unified into a precise 3D model. Experimental results demonstrate the efficiency of the presented method, which enhances the flexibility of digitization while maintaining the accuracy of feature surfaces.

This paper addresses Virtual Reality-assisted pre-testing of NC programs and describes the benefits of testing them with respect to processing on the NC control unit. Thereby collisions of machine axes can be recognized, downtimes can be minimized and costs arising from faulty NC programs can be cut. Newly-engineered visualization of material removal in real-time-capable VR systems facilitates an even more realistic simulation of the production process, and thereby enables even those users who are not specialists in the field to quickly comprehend the ever more complex processes involved, and thus to recognize potential errors more effectively. By using the hardware in loop-coupling between a real NC control unit and a virtual machine model, errors caused by the NC control unit itself can be recognized.

Most Non-Destructive Tests (NDT) rely on effects, which are invisible without special equipment – e.g. ultrasound, X-rays, electromagnetic fields. This fact complicates the understanding of the individual inspection techniques and their handling – e.g. during calibration, optimising and documenting of tests. Therefore, suitable methods and tools have to be developed in order to improve the understanding of NDT effects – e.g., by means of modelling of the processes with consequent simulation and visualisation of the results or the process model in virtual reality (VR). Uncomplicated accessibility and usability in both technical and economical sense are key aspects for these methods and tools in order to become generally accepted and well-established.

Different manufacturing processes typically do not evolve collectively; often one technology evolves to do what another cannot and reaches new depths of potential. Rather than competing in separate systems, connecting these processes as a shared system utilizes the strengths of both and creates a foundation for collaborative (hybrid) design and manufacturing. This chapter explores a methodology that harnesses knowledge of different processes (Fused Deposition Modeling and CNC machining), through the Analytic Hierarchy Process, effectively designing and manufacturing the best part. Managing complexity in modularization, this hybrid methodology is tested in application through case study (casting pattern design and manufacture).

Additive Layer Manufacture (ALM) is a technique whereby freeform structures are produced by building up material in layers. RUAM (Ready-to-Use Additive Layer Manufacturing) is an innovative concept for building large scale metal ready-to-use parts. The design for RUAM has several process steps: the geometric design of the parts taking the complex process behaviour of the arc welding process into account; FEM to predict temperature and stress distributions to minimise part distortions; and efficient robot tool path design. This paper covers these essential design steps from a technical as well as practical point of view.

Titanium and Cr-Co-Mo alloys are the most attractive metallic biomaterials for orthopedic and dental implants: selective laser sintering technique may use these materials but it still remains limited in terms of foreseeable performances as function of process parameters. The method essentially relies on empirical, experimental knowledge and still lacks a strong theoretical basis. This paper investigates the orientation influence on mechanical performances of Ti6Al4V grade 5 and Cr-Co-Mo specimen built by selective laser sintering. The tensile strength and the rupture surface observation allow to explain the tensile strength values obtained as a function of the fine microstructure that is confirmed by metallographic observation.