scholarly journals An Innovative Framework for Managing the Customization of Tailor-made Shoes

Author(s):  
Marco Marconi ◽  
Alessandra Papetti ◽  
Martina Scafà ◽  
Marta Rossi ◽  
Michele Germani

AbstractProduct customization aims to consider individual customers preferences in the design of new products, in order to directly involve them in the product development process and to maximize their satisfaction. It can be considered a key competitive factor and a “hot topic” in several industrial sectors, including luxury apparel goods and high-end footwear products. However, currently the design and manufacturing of customized shoes are carried out through artisanal and non-standardized processes, based on the individual expertise of operators.The objective of this study is to define an innovative framework to support the different processes affected by customization. This framework is enabled by different digital technologies, as CAD-based tools, virtual/augmented reality systems, etc., opportunely integrated in the product development process. The main benefits related to the framework implementation in real industrial contexts are an increase of flexibility, the repeatability of processes, a higher efficiency in information exchange, a more effective involvement of final customers, and, as a consequence, the reduction of time to market and production costs for tailor-made shoes.

Author(s):  
Götz v. Esebeck ◽  
Oliver Tegel ◽  
Jeffrey L. Miller ◽  
Karl-Heinrich Grote

Abstract As companies become aware that they have to restructure their product development processes to survive global competition in the market, it is important that they evaluate which management methods and techniques are suitable to improve the performance of the process and which design methods can be integrated and be used efficiently. A combination of management methods like Total Quality Management (TQM), Simultaneous or Concurrent Engineering, and Lean Development can be adapted to meet the requirements of a company more than a single strategy. Interdisciplinary teamwork, cross-hierarchical communication, and delegation of work in addition to employee motivation changes the common attitude towards the work process in the company and integrates the staff more tightly into the process. Nowadays, there is tight cooperation between companies and their sub-contractors, as sub-contractors not only have to manufacture the part or sub-assembly, but often have to design it. Therefore, the product development process has to be defined in a way that the sub-contractors can be tightly integrated into the product development process. Additionally, it is important to break the product down into functionally separate modules during the conceptual phase of the process. If the interfaces between these functions are defined as specifications, these modules can easily be given to suppliers or to other teams inside the company for further development. The use of methods such as Design for Manufacture (DFM) or Design for Assembly (DFA) early during the development process, which utilize the knowledge of experts from manufacturing and assembly, results in a decreasing number of iterative loops during the design process and therefore reduces time-to-market. This cross-functional cooperation leads to improved quality of both processes and products. In this paper, different management methods to achieve the best improvement from the product development process are discussed. In addition, suitable design methods for achieving cost reduction, quality improvement, and reduction of time-to-market are presented. Finally, proposals for industry on methods to reorganize the Integrated Product Development (IPD) process based on actual findings are presented.


Author(s):  
Aditya Balu ◽  
Sambit Ghadai ◽  
Gavin Young ◽  
Soumik Sarkar ◽  
Adarsh Krishnamurthy

The widespread adoption of computer-aided design (CAD) and manufacturing (CAM) tools has resulted in the acceleration of the product development process, reducing the time taken to design a product [46]. However, the product development process, for the most part, is still decentralized with the design and manufacturing reviews being performed independently, leading to differences between as-designed and as-manufactured component. A successful product needs to meet its specifications, while also being manufacturable. In general, the design engineer ensures that the product is able to function according to the specified requirements, while the manufacturing engineer gives feedback to the design engineer about its manufacturability. This iterative process is often time consuming, leading to longer product development times and higher costs. Recent researches in integrating design and manufacturing [24, 28, 46] have tried to reduce these differences and making the product development process easier and accessible to designers, who may not be manufacturing experts. In addition, there have been different efforts to enable a collaborative product development process and reduce the number of design iterations [8, 10, 41]. However, with the increase in complexity of designs, integrating the manufacturability analysis within the design environment provides an ideal solution to improve the product design process.


Author(s):  
Amanda Bligh ◽  
Manbir Sodhi

Even though the literature on product and process development is extensive, not much attention has been devoted to categorizing the product development process itself. Existing work on product development processes such as Total Design, Integrated Product and Process Design among others advocate common approaches that should be followed throughout the organization, without any consideration of product characteristics. In this paper we review several existing development methodologies. Extensions of these are categorized by their applicability to different classes of products. We propose that development processes should be matched to product attributes and organization goals. Towards this end, we associate development processes along with their components such as House of Quality, Robust Design, TRIZ etc. with goals such as time to market, customer needs satisfaction, intellectual property generation, protection and exploitation, quality, product cost and others. We examine the impact of this association on the development process itself and propose guidelines for constructing specific processes associated with one or more goals. Tools and benchmarks for various applications are discussed, along with some case studies on the design of different development processes.


Author(s):  
Adam J. Shuttleworth ◽  
Atul Kelkar

Prior to the acceptance of computer aided engineering (CAE) software in the product development process (PDP), product development was characterized by a design-test-redesign-test cycle. This activity was time consuming and resource intensive. As CAE software tools have been integrated into the PDP, the PDP has been characterized by a design-simulate-redesign-test cycle. The addition of CAE tools to the PDP has reduced the time to market and resource consumption. Although the benefits of the integration of CAE software in the PDP process have been realized, there still exists an arbitrary relationship between the results from the CAE tools to engineering decisions regarding product design.


Author(s):  
Kuang-Hua Chang ◽  
Javier Silva ◽  
Ira Bryant

Abstract Conventional product development process employs a design-build-break philosophy. The sequentially executed product development process often results in a prolonged lead-time and an elevated product cost. The proposed concurrent design and manufacturing (CDM) process employs physics-based computational methods together with computer graphics technique for product design. This proposed approach employs Virtual Prototyping (VP) technology to support a cross-functional team analyzing product performance, reliability, and manufacturing cost early in the product development stage; and conducting quantitative trade-off for design decision making. Physical prototypes of the product design are then produced using Rapid Prototyping (RP) technique primarily for design verification purposes. The proposed CDM approach holds potential for shortening the overall product development cycle, improving product quality, and reducing product cost. A software tool environment that supports CDM for mechanical systems is being built at the Concurrent Design and Manufacturing Research Laboratory (http://cdm.ou.edu) at the University of Oklahoma. A snap shot of the environment is illustrated using a two-stroke engine example. This paper presents three unique concepts and methods for product development: (i) bringing product performance, quality, and manufacturing cost together in early design stage for design considerations, (ii) supporting design decision-making through a quantitative approach, and (iii) incorporating rapid prototyping for design verification through physical prototypes.


2012 ◽  
Vol 163 ◽  
pp. 221-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fang Liu ◽  
Li Hong Qiao

Model-based definition (MBD) promises reduced time-to-market and improved product quality. Adopting MBD concept in product development process seems to be the next reasonable step. However, some existent critical issues related to data content and presentation need to be overcome. To offer proper solutions from the standpoint of design and manufacturing integration, MBD concept was firstly introduced in order to describe its characteristics and capabilities. Then the answers to the following questions were given: what data are necessary for design and manufacturing integration, how data should be semantically organized and presented based on solid model and CATIA PPR (Product Process & Resource) tree.


Volume 3 ◽  
2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emmanuel Maravelakis ◽  
Nicholas Bilalis ◽  
Aristomenis Antoniadis ◽  
Vassilis Moustakis

Innovation is a major driving force for the economic growth and expansion of companies and the need to innovate has become clear by now. The quality of the decisions during the design phase of a product development process is strongly connected with the assessment of the product, process and organisational innovation dimensions. The developed methodology addresses these three axes, using 30 innovation attributes, in order to obtain a product innovation profile through an innovation survey. This way a range of industry standard Innovation scores called PIP-SCORES (Product Innovation Profile scores -or innovation benchmarks) have been established. So far more than 600 companies coming from a range of industrial sectors that include creative industries, electrical/electronic, fire and safety, footwear, plastics, ceramics and textiles, have participated in this survey and their innovation profiles have been included in the database. The proposed tool benchmarks the product innovation profile of a company with the corresponding innovation scores from companies coming from the same sector. Next, the tool utilises a Design Structure Matrix, for mapping the dependencies between the Innovation Attributes. Furthermore an Innovation Improvement Impact Value for each Attribute is introduced. In order to improve the innovative profile of a company, a considerable amount of resources is needed. Provided that resources are usually limited to most companies, an optimal improvement strategy, based on the Innovation Improvement Impact values is proposed. The proposed tool (I-DSM, Innovation - Design Structure Matrix) aims at improving the innovative performance of a company, by minimizing the product development cycle and by improving the performance of the product development process.


Author(s):  
Thiago Weber Martins ◽  
Christian Steinmetz ◽  
Katharina Albrecht ◽  
Reiner Anderl

Within the Collaborative Research Center 666 the algorithm based product development process has been established. It is based on state of the art product development methodologies and enhanced in order to optimize the product development process of integral bifurcated sheet metal parts. Algorithms based on mathematical optimization approaches as well as the initial product requirements and constraints information are applied to obtain an optimized design as CAD-Model. Regarding this methodology there are still some challenges to be solved, such as reduction of iterations steps to elaborate final product design as CAD-model, use of heterogeneous data as well as software and enhancement of information exchange. Therefore, this paper introduces a concept for a web-based application to support the algorithmic product development methodology and CAD modeling in CRC 666. It enables the development and adaptation of integral bifurcated parts based on the initial optimization data provided by XML-files. Besides the description of use cases and use scenarios, the concept is implemented as a web-based application for validation purposes. Based on the validation, advantages and limitations of the presented approach are discussed.


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