On Providing Formal Manufacturability Information to Upstream Product Development Processes: Methodology and Case Study

Author(s):  
Eliab Z. Opiyo

Process planning is a key product development activity that links design and manufacturing, and is traditionally carried out based on the outcome of the design process. One of the consequences of conducting process planning after design is that the process planning (manufacturability) information needed in the execution of upstream activities is in most cases not available formally. Using informal manufacturability information in the early phases of the product development process can lead to e.g. untrustworthy feasibility study or unnecessary design iterations. As an attempt to solve this problem, a modular procedure for execution of process planning activities is proposed in this paper. It allows for the execution of some of the process planning activities to commence as soon as the details of the order and the requirements for the product are known. The goal is to ensure that formal manufacturability information is available in various stages of the product development process, including to those activities that take place prior to process planning. The new modular process planning procedure has been applied, and it has been found that the design iterations caused by lack of manufacturability information can be avoided. This paper first defines the problem and presents related works. It then introduces the modular process planning procedure, and presents an application case study.

Author(s):  
Gritt Ahrens

Abstract A method for the parallelization of the working steps of an existing product development process is discribed. The procedure which is based on the design methodology as described by Pahl and Beitz provides a framework of rules and guidelines which enable the project leader to judge in which phase of a development and design process the introduction of Simultaneous Engineering is profitable. In a case study of a German manufacturer of tubomachines and its subcontractor the developed method is validated by the example of the development and design process of a geared compressors. The reorganized process was tested using a commercially available 3D-CAD-System in order to simulate the design tasks and a commercially available PDM-System for the handling of the data produced.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 531-540
Author(s):  
Albert Albers ◽  
Miriam Wilmsen ◽  
Kilian Gericke

AbstractThe implementation of agile frameworks, such as SAFe, in large companies causes conflicts between the overall product development process with a rigid linkage to the calendar cycles and the continuous agile project planning. To resolve these conflicts, adaptive processes can be used to support the creation of realistic target-processes, i.e. project plans, while stabilizing process quality and simplifying process management. This enables the usage of standardisation methods and module sets for design processes.The objective of this contribution is to support project managers to create realistic target-processes through the usage of target-process module sets. These target-process module sets also aim to stabilize process quality and to simplify process management. This contribution provides an approach for the development and application of target-process module sets, in accordance to previously gathered requirements and evaluates the approach within a case study with project managers at AUDI AG (N=21) and an interview study with process authors (N=4) from three different companies.


Revista Foco ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 63
Author(s):  
Ricardo Oselame Schiochet

O presente artigo pretende investigar de que forma as mudanças no comportamento do mercado e o crescimento da consciência ambiental tem feito com que os consumidores mudem sua postura e exijam das empresas uma readequação de processos com vistas a adotar métodos de gestão mais alinhados com a questão da sustentabilidade e principalmente dos impactos ambientais de suas ações. Sendo assim, o principal objetivo deste artigo é compreender de que maneira empresas de diferentes segmentos estão implementando os conceitos e ferramentas de ecodesign em seus processos de desenvolvimento de produto. Para tanto, foi realizado um levantamento teórico em periódicos da área, além de um estudo exploratório de campo baseado em entrevistas em profundidade, que mostrou que a motivação das empresas para a adoção de práticas de ecodesign ainda é limitada a cumprir exigências legais, ou como forma de redução de custos. Sob uma perspectiva mercadológica percebe-se que o marketing exerce pouca influência na relação entre o ecodesign e o processo de desenvolvimento de produtos.   This article intends to investigate how changes in market behavior and the growth of environmental awareness have made consumers to change their posture and demand from companies a process readjustment with a view to adopt management methods more in line with sustainability and especially the environmental impacts. Therefore, the main objective of this article is to understand how companies from different segments are implementing ecodesign concepts and tools in their product development processes. For that, a theoretical survey was carried out, as well as an exploratory field study based on in-depth interviews, which showed that the motivation of companies for the adoption of ecodesign practices is still limited to complying legal requirements, or as way of reducing costs.  From a marketing perspective, it is perceived that marketing has little influence on the relationship between ecodesign and product development process.


Author(s):  
Gritt Ahrens ◽  
Oliver Tegel

Abstract An approach to support the appropriate definition, formulation and presentation of requirements obeying the needs of the employees is being presented. Classifiying the needs for information of the employees according to some characteristics, a guideline for how to promote the information needed by them can be developed. The goal is to ensure that everyone involved in the process — even the subcontractor — has the right information available in the right form at the right time. Defining requirements lists, splitting them into partial requirements lists for each area of the company, each process phase or each team, and then formulating these requirements and presenting them in an adequate way is the proceeding strived for. The result will be implemented into an information infrastructure to support the product development process continuously.


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):  
Ville Kukko-Liedes ◽  
Maria Mikkonen ◽  
Tua Björklund

AbstractEstablished companies turn to new ventures for bolstering exploration activities, but we know relatively little of the product development processes of startups and new ventures and how different stakeholders are utilized in these. The current study investigated the product development activities and experiments of eight Finnish food and beverage ventures in a multiple case study based on 22 interviews. How the developed products fit into the existing portfolio and experience of the ventures seemed to define their enacted development process. Internal experimentation was a constant feature, although the type of experiments varied between different phases of the development process. External-facing experiments were less frequent and more for validation than concept generation. On the other hand, they also carried important market creation functionalities. The results suggest that more nuanced terminology around experimentation would be useful to determine what type of experiments serve different goals in the development process.


2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 517-532
Author(s):  
Rachel Parker-Strak ◽  
Liz Barnes ◽  
Rachel Studd ◽  
Stephen Doyle

PurposeThis research critically investigates product development in the context of fast fashion online retailers who are developing “own label” fashion clothing. With a focus upon inputs, outputs, planning and management in order to comprehensively map the interplay of people, processes and the procedures of the product development process adopted.Design/methodology/approachQualitative research method was employed. Face-to-face semi structured in depth interviews were conducted with key informants from market leading fast fashion online retailers in the UK.FindingsThe major findings of this research demonstrate the disruptions in the product development process in contemporary and challenging fashion retailing and a new “circular process” model more appropriate and specific to online fast fashion businesses is presented.Research limitations/implicationsThe research has implications for the emerging body of theory relating to fashion product development. The research is limited to UK online fashion retailers, although their operations are global.Practical implicationsThe findings from this study may be useful for apparel product development for retailers considering an online and fast fashion business model.Originality/valueThe emergent process model in this study may be used as a baseline for further studies to compare product development processes.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 1017-1026
Author(s):  
G. O. Mueller ◽  
C. A. Bertram ◽  
N. H. Mortensen

AbstractEngineer-To-Order (ETO) companies develop complex one-of-a-kind products based on specific customer demands. Given the product uniqueness, the commissioning plays an important role in the product development process. However, the project variety and low data availability hinder the analysis of the commissioning processes. This paper proposes a framework for the structured analysis of commissioning processes in ETO companies by analysing the impacts from product requirements and design on the commissioning performance. A case study presents the practical application of the developed framework.


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.


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