Coordination of Complex Product Development Processes

Product development processes of complex products are complex themselves and particularly difficult to plan and manage effectively. Although many organizations manage their product development processes by monitoring the status of documents that are created as deliverables, in fact the progress of the process is in large part based on the actual information flow which is required to develop the product and produce the documents. A vital element in making product development processes work well is the correct understanding of how information flows and how to facilitate its development. In this paper we describe an executable stochastic model of the product development process that incorporates the salient features of the interplay between the information development, exchange and progress of the technical work. Experiments with the model provide insight into the mechanisms that drive these complex processes.

Environmental Analysis of Consumer Products During the Conceptual Phase of Product Design

This paper describes efforts taken to further transition life cycle analysis techniques from the latter, more detailed phases of design, to the early-on conceptual phase of product development. By using modern design methodologies such as automated concept generation and an archive of product design knowledge, known as the Design Repository, virtual concepts are created and specified. Streamlined life cycle analysis techniques are then used to determine the environmental impacts of the virtual concepts. As a means to benchmark the virtual results, analogous real-life products that have functional and component similarities are identified. The identified products are then scrutinized to determine their material composition and manufacturing attributes in order to perform an additional round of life cycle analysis for the actual products. The results of this research show that enough information exists within the conceptual phase of design (utilizing the Design Repository) to reasonably predict the relative environmental impacts of actual products based on virtual concepts.

Sustainable Distribution Design: Contrasting Disposable, Recyclable, and Reusable Strategies for Packaging Materials Using a Total Cost Analysis With an Illustration of Milk Distribution

Engineers, policy makers, and managers have shown increasing interest in increasing the sustainability of products over their complete lifecycles and also from the ‘cradle to grave’ or from production to the disposal of each specific product. However, a significant amount of material is disposed of in landfills rather than being reused in some form. A sizeable proportion of the products being dumped in landfills consist of packaging materials for consumable products. Technological advances in plastics, packaging, cleaning, logistics, and new environmental awareness and understanding may have altered the cost structures surrounding the lifecycle use and disposal costs of many materials and products resulting in different cost-benefit trade-offs. An explicit and well-informed economic analysis of reusing certain containers might change current practices and results in significantly less waste disposal in landfills and in less consumption of resources for manufacturing packaging materials. This work presents a method for calculating the costs associated with a complete process of implementing a system to reuse plastic containers for food products. Specifically, the different relative costs of using a container and then either disposing of it in a landfill, recycling the material, or reconditioning the container for reuse and then reusing it are compared explicitly. Specific numbers and values are calculated for the case of plastic milk bottles to demonstrate the complicated interactions and the feasibility of such a strategy.

E-Waste Stream Analysis and Design Implications

The problem addressed in this paper is that the incoming stream of “feedstock” from product take-back systems is known to be widely variable, but the type and extent of that variability have not been well defined. This paper presents an analysis of data from an incoming e-waste stream for a computer refurbisher, and analyzes the type and degree of variability. The implications for design for sustainability are presented, along with a discussion of suggested future research needs.

A Study on Situated Cognition: Product Dissection’s Effect on Redesign Activities

Situation cognition theory describes the context of a learning activity’s effect on learner’s cognition. In this paper, we use situated cognition theory to examine the effect of product dissection on product redesign activities. Two research questions were addressed: 1) Does situated cognition, in the form of product dissection, improve product functionality during redesign exercise?, and 2) Does situation cognition, again in the form of product dissection, affect the creativity of product redesigns? In this study, three sections of first year students in two different locations — The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) and Missouri University of Science and Technology (S&T) — performed product redesign using either an electric toothbrush or a coffee maker. The redesigned products have been analyzed with respect to both depth (detail level) and creativity.

Service Information for Product Quality

Engineering products go through 4 stages of lifecycle; design, production, use, and disposal. Engineers have developed tools for avoiding design flaws that cause troubles in the later stages. Accidents and malfunctions, however, still happen and some are even catastrophic. Once in the market, products require service. Whether scheduled, or unexpected, service is mostly carried out by subsidiaries of the manufacturer or sometimes unrelated specialists. When product troubles occur, service companies tend to seek solutions within their own organization without going back to the design stage. This approach may prove less costly, however, quick fixes may lead to disasters. Industries currently lack effective ways of feeding service information back to design. We analyzed some real accidents that took place in Japan where hard work in the use stage triggered the events. Information from the use stage to design will prevent accidents and also improve design to closely model reality.

Incorporating Cost and Resource Efficiency Into the Development of Green Recycling Technologies

The development of cost-effective and green recycling technologies for secondary metal recovery from industrial wastes is one of the new challenges on the sustainable development agenda. By incorporating cost and resource efficiency assessment into the technology innovation process, we aim to improve the sustainability of new recycling technologies by minimizing process waste, improving resource efficiency, thus reducing the recovery process cost. This paper focuses on modeling and assessing the production cost and resource use efficiency for closed-loop nickel recovery from spent hydrogenation catalysts. The engineering economics factors and process variables that affect the profitability and resource efficiency of nickel recovery are identified. They are modeled in cost and efficiency metrics. Model-based scenarios assessment revealed that compared to open-loop nickel recovery, the closed-loop concept delivers more cost-effective and greener recycling solutions. The closed-loop process cost reduction via efficient resource use and process waste minimization is in the range of 18.4% to 24.0% compared to the open-loop process option.

A Conflict Detection Approach for Collaborative Management of Product Interfaces

In complex products, maintaining subsystem consistency throughout the design process is often a time-consuming process of document exchange among cooperating functions. This paper describes a conflict management approach that lead to the computer-aided management of the product specification conflicts that happen due to the integration of subsystems. In order to define a framework, a systematic interface representation which proposes building generic interface schemes for subsystem connectivity representation is described. Based on this methodology, a functional architecture of the proposed conflict management method, along with generic exception taxonomy of conflicts is developed. The applicability of the proposed concepts is discussed through illustrative examples. The proposed methodology is intended to allow automatic detection and handling of interface connectivity errors throughout collaborative design processes.

A Framework Supporting Life-Cycle Guidance for Fabricating Micro Components by Compression Moulding

Micro-products and components are rapidly increasing in a range of sectors. This demand requires industrial technologies capable of mass producing polymer micro products at a reasonable price. These two requirements are satisfied by the use of replication technologies such as micro compression moulding (μCM). A literature review that we conducted revealed that there is indeed little if any work explicitly related to the domain of micro compression moulding. In addition, a design methodology in micro manufacturing is still in its infancy and that there is a shortage of relevant DFX guidelines. Thus, this research aims at developing a framework for a computer-based tool whereby micro-product stakeholders are guided to select the correct mould features, material, machine and process parameters for fabricating components via micro compression moulding. The paper presents a framework developed to meet this goal. A proof-of-concept tool has also been implemented based on this framework. This tool was evaluated by typical case studies and also presented to a number of experts in the field. Preliminary evaluation results provide a degree of evidence that technology based on the framework contributes a step towards providing guidance for the design and manufacture of mould tools for fabricating μ-components by compression moulding. Another contribution of this paper is the preliminary fabrication platform using μCM. Future work is however required mainly to assess the economic feasibility of the fabrication platform, to address the limitations of the implemented tool, and to assess its effectiveness in practice.

An Approach to Modeling Customer Preference Uncertainty by Applying Bootstrap to Choice-Based Conjoint Analysis Data

Analysis of customer preferences is among the most important tasks in a new product development. How customers come to appreciate and decide to purchase a new product affects the products market share and therefore its success or failure. Unfortunately, when designers select a product concept early in the product development process, customer preference response to the new product is unknown. Conjoint analysis is a statistical marketing tool that has been used to estimate market shares of new product concepts by analyzing data on the product ratings, rankings or concept choices of customers. This paper proposes an alternative to traditional conjoint analysis methods that provide point estimates of market shares. It proposes two approaches to model market share uncertainty; bootstrap and binomial inference applied to choice-based conjoint analysis data. The proposed approaches are demonstrated and compared using an illustrative example.