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This research provides a study of practices of innovative ideation. The literature highlights the need for more radical innovation as drivers for customer delight, and more innovative approaches to understanding customers. However, both the theory and application, including the resultant practise describe and present a product-centred approach to innovation as best practise. Using an Action Research methodology within the Advanced Product Group of a well known automotive manufacturer; the technical centre of another well known automotive manufacturer and the industrial design department of a university, this exploratory and descriptive study contributes to the understanding and practise of more innovative approaches to customer driven ideation. Literature suggests that integrating customer understanding into the earliest stages of new product development was critical both to its effectiveness and its ability to innovate. This study, therefore aimed to investigate innovative ideation by considering two key factors: 1. Its integration into the early stages of the product design and development process 2. Industrial design practises of customer understanding The research concluded on Industrial Design practise as well as the evolving practise of Innovative Ideation. Industrial designers' participate in ideation processes and practices in a unique way, not fully represented or accounted for in existing prescriptions for integrating customer understanding. They require specific types of information, usually general in nature and presented visually. Information integrated into these practises is often substantiated with case study and example-based evidence or data. The potential to innovate is regarded as the single most significant motivator for designers to participate in customer understanding. Paradoxically, designers' processes use and rely upon 'product' as a focus for innovation and communication of design integrity. A designer's key role and most significant contribution, is in creative and strategic thinking: (new ideas: IDEATION): that is the integration of the actions of idea generation and the formulation of creative design responses; and the proposal of new concepts, which place a strong emphasis on increasing the desirability of 'product experiences' or new behaviours. This orientation of design considerations and the questions associated with them are particularly unique to industrial design disciplines. They are systems based and holistic in their approach in order to prioritise customer needs within the design brief. An important early aspect is the identification of customer attitudes and activities, which broadens the design considerations. This study relates these findings to an existing Empathic Design methodology and Kano's model of delight (1995), as identified best practice drivers for ideation. This study also concludes that 'Empathic Design' (it's theory, descriptions, definitions and practise) and product design as a discipline (its profile, uses and practise) need to evolve in order to embrace customer understanding as a pathway to innovation.

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Sustainable design provides an holistic, life-cycle approach by which design engineers can minimise negative impacts and maximise positive impacts, thus ensuring that current industrial progress is not achieved at the expense of future generations. In the context of sustainable design, large made-to-order (LMTO) product sectors must address some unique issues: " The design process may be in the order of years, involving the client, the design contractors, co-venturers, suppliers and regulators. 9 The one-off nature of the design may limit the opportunity for reuse of design knowledge. 11 The existenceo f the possibility of catastrophico ut-of-envelopee ventsl eading to large scale safety and environmental impacts. " There is potential for high energy and resource consumption. " . Some LMTO products may cause local and transboundary environmental impacts. 0 There may be long term, post-decommissioning impacts. 0 Some aspects of the product life-cycle may give rise to impacts on social welfare. Engineering design is a process of decision making both during option synthesis and option selection. The first part of this research examined the current integration of environmental objectives and attributes with industrial design decision making processes using qualitative research methods. In particular, design selection was considered as the case-study focused on the activities of two case-study design contractors. The second part of the research proposed a framework to assist the consideration of environmental and societal impacts using transparent, systematic methodologies based on Multiple Attribute Decision Making (MADM) approaches. Two MADM methods were compared in relation to a case-study regarding the selection of an option for a produced water treatment system; Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) and Concordance and Discordance Analyses by Similarity to Ideal Solution (CODASID). Due to the subjectivity and uncertainty associated with information relating to sustainable design, a fuzzy set-based methodology was also investigated. In order to simulate the intuitive processes of human decision makers, the application of linguistic terms to evaluate sustainable design attributes was explored. This method was applied to a group decision making case-study to determine the best option for replacing a heat exchanger situated in a pond water cooling system. Comparisons were made between the fuzzy MADM method and the decision obtained from a group-based discussion. Finally, the third part of the research specifically addressed perceived risk attributed by the public to proposed large made-to-order products or processes, accommodating the societal element of sustainable design. Public risk perception was decomposed into measurable indices which were suitable for application to the fuzzy MADM method. The final aggregated evaluation, representing the overall perceived risk associated with the product in question, was then examined under different tolerance scenarios in order to make an informed judgement with respect to product viability. These three core research elements provide the foundation for managing the environmental and societal aspects of sustainable engineering design of large made-toorder products, thus providing an important addition to the wider concept of integrated product design.

This thesis presents an enquiry into the nature and role of prototyping within human-centred design practice, examining the capabilities and limitations of emerging prototyping technologies within this context. A contextual review explores the significance of the human element in design. This leads to the proposal of a paradigm statement for human-centred design which informs the theoretical and practical research activity undertaken in the course of this investigation. A critical review of literature aimed at the design and engineering professions identifies a rhetoric celebrating the virtualisation of design processes. Here, advocates of emerging virtual prototyping technologies argue computer-based simulation techniques may reduce or replace physical prototype iterations, thereby greatly increasing the speed and efficiency of new product development processes. This thesis questions the extent to which virtual prototyping can replace physical human input in design. A counter argument to the designer's total immersion in the virtual design world is that valuable creative opportunities may be revealed through discovery-oriented physical prototyping. Furthermore, it may not be possible to adequately describe all aspects of a design proposal using virtual methods alone. This is demonstrated in practical investigations in which designers sought to exploit tactile qualities as essential features in design, and also in cases involving complex structural behaviour. Despite significant advances in virtual prototyping technologies, there remain some types of design problem which may only be identified and addressed through the making and testing of physical models. Moreover, this thesis argues that the valuable practical knowledge which may be derived through hands-on engagement and manipulation of physical prototypes and materials must be retained as an essential human element in design.

It is common for modern engineering systems to feature dependency relationships between its components. The existence of these dependencies render the fault tree analysis (FTA) and its efficient implementation, the Binary Decision Diagram (BDD) approach, inappropriate in predicting the system failure probability. Whilst the Markov method provides an alternative means of analysis of systems of this nature, it is susceptible to state space explosion problems for large, or even moderate sized systems. Within this thesis, a process is proposed to improve the applicability of the Markov analysis. With this process, the smallest independent sections (modules) which contain each dependency type are identified in a fault tree and analysed by the most efficient method. Thus, BDD and the Markov analysis are applied in a combined way to improve the analysis efficiency. The BDD method is applied to modules which contain no dependency, and the Markov analysis applied to modules in which dependencies exist. Different types of dependency which can arise in an engineering system assessment are identified. Algorithms for establishing a Markov model have also been developed for each type of dependency. Three types of system are investigated in this thesis in the context of dependency modelling: the continuously-operating system, the active-on-demand system and the phased-mission system. Different quantification techniques have been developed for each type of system to obtain the system failure probability and other useful predictive measures. Investigation is also carried out into the use of BDD in assessing non-repairable systems involving dependencies. General processes have been established to enable the quantification.

One of the most important decisions which should be made at the early stage of the design process is to select one design alternative. Not only should the decision be made by tradeoffs between different conflicting criteria of the single stakeholder but also to aggregate different outcomes obtained by multiple stakeholders. This thesis represents a decision support tool for selecting design alternatives, in which a single choice has to be made between a number of alternatives in the presence of single or multiple stakeholders, multiple conflicting criteria, and resource limitation, based on two routes: using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) alone and the combination of AHP with Zero-One Goal Programming (ZOGP). Using AHP-ZOGP allows the concept-concept and concept-specification approaches to be considered simultaneously in order to improve the process of concept design selections. Different outcomes obtained by using AHP alone, can be aggregated by two heuristic methods based on distance function, to generate an index for final single selection. The first method uses the final weights obtained by AHP, while the second method uses its detailed weights. AHP weights are then used to construct the ZOGP's objective function and constraints' parameters of intangible criteria for each individual stakeholder. Another ZOGP model can be constructed to aggregate the different outcomes, obtained by individual ZOGP's models, based on combining their objective functions. The advantages of using aggregated ZOGP models in comparison with heuristic methods are, not only ZOGP aggregated model is able to minimise the undesirable distances between sub-criteria and Product Design Specification (PDS), but also it can take into account the resource limitations explicitly. The case studies, which involved vehicle manufacturing technology selection, choosing a peristaltic pump, selection of a swivel joint design, and the justification of advanced manufacturing systems, possessed the characteristics of the type of problems this tool is intended to support. The case studies showed how it is possible to consider many criteria from different stakeholders to yield a single outcome that covers the requirements of those stakeholders.

With fast moving markets and increasingly global competition, companies now recognise that every aspect of a product, through its development and beyond, must be considered when making design decisions. Design for X tools are a popular way of doing this, providing information on how design choices affect subsequent lifephases or important virtues of the product. However, each DfX tool imposes a preference structure on the designers by giving precedence to a single virtue or lifephase, and offering no way of reconciling trade-offs with others. This thesis demonstrates that decision analysis - a technique for evaluating alternatives against conflicting objectives - can resolve this problem by incorporating DfX information in design decisions without imposing a preference structure. As many DfX techniques are available, attention is restricted to the context of integrated product and process design, where design decisions include the implications of manufacturing. Eight characteristics are proposed, taken from concurrent engineering principles and decision analysis, for successful integrated product and process design decisions. A relationship is shown to exist between DfX and decision analysis, and this relationship is embodied as a methodology for decision-making in integrated product and process design. Three Design Experiments and two Case Studies demonstrate that this methodology is feasible, and exhibits the desired characteristics in practice. Further work is necessary to determine whether these findings generalise to other DfX and whether this is an appropriate method of combination. Then future DfX tools could be developed based on decision analysis principles that can analyse designs systematically against multiple virtues and lifephases. By demonstrating the relationship between Design for X and decision analysis, and showing that it can be used in practice, this thesis provides the first step along this path.