In this dissertation, we investigate the problem of designing standard modules which can be used in a wide variety of products. The basic problem is: given a set of parts and products, and a list of the number of each part required in each product, how do we group parts into modules and modules into products to minimize costs and satisfy requirements. The design of computers, electronic equipments, tool kits, emergency vehicles and standard military groupings are among the potential applications for this work. Several mathematical programming models for modular design are developed and the advantages and weaknesses of each model have been analyzed. We demonstrate the difficulties, due to nonconvexity, of applying global optimization methods to solve these mathematical models. We develop necessary and sufficient conditions for satisfying requirements exactly, and use these results in several heuristic methods. Three heuristic structures; decomposition, sequential local search, and approximation, are considered. The decomposition approach extends previous work on modular design problems. Sequential local search uses a standard local solution routine (MINOS) and sequentially adds cuts on the objective function to the original model. The approximation approach uses a "least squares" relaxation to find upper and lower bounds on the objective of the optimal solution. Computational results are presented for all three approaches and suggest that the approximation approach performs better than the others (with respect to speed and solution quality). We conclude the dissertation with a stochastic variation of the modular design problem and a solution heuristic. We discuss an approximation model to the continuous formulation, which is a geometric programming model. We develop a heuristic to solve this problem using monotonicity properties of the functions. Computational results are given and compared with an upper bound.

O objetivo deste trabalho de pesquisa é realizar uma análise exploratória do desenvolvimento de novos produtos e produção em empresas do segmento automotivo que adotam a estratégia modular. A estratégia para a indústria automotiva é uma forma de simplificar a gestão de um produto, considerado complexo, num ambiente de intensa competição, inovação tecnológica e redução do ciclo de vida do produto. Na verdade, é um conjunto de conceitos que leva a novas formas de organizar o desenvolvimento do produto e a produção, possibilitando a transferência de atividades de projeto do produto e produção na cadeia produtiva. Para o delineamento da pesquisa foi utilizado o estudo de caso na análise de duas montadoras de veículos comerciais que produzem produtos semelhantes (caminhões e chassis de ônibus). Uma das montadoras opera com o sistema de consórcio modular e a outra, embora mais convencional, aplica o conceito de modularidade na linha de montagem final. O estudo de caso também foi utilizado na análise de dois fornecedores de primeiro nível, que fornecem motores para a montadora que opera o consórcio modular, sob a óptica do desenvolvimento de novos produtos e montagem do módulo no veículo. De uma forma ampla, a pesquisa revelou que os novos desenvolvimentos de produtos modulares influenciam o sistema produtivo existente e por outro lado, este também exerce influência no projeto do produto. Para minimizar as consequências as montadoras lançam medidas que integram os times de engenharia e fornecedores e adotam medidas para simulação do processo antes do início de produção. / The aim of this research paper is performing an exploratory analysis of the new product development and production in automotive companies that use the modular strategy. The strategy for the automotive industry is a way to simplify the management of complex products in an environment of intense competition, technological innovation and shorter product life cycles. Indeed, it is a set of concepts that lead to new way of organizing the product and production development, enabling the transfer of project activities and production in the chain. Aiming the research design, it was used the case study analysis in two automakers, which produces similar products (trucks and bus chassis). One of the automakers operates the modular consortium system, and the other, though more conventional, applies the modular concept in the final assembly line. Also, the case study was used in the analysis of two first tier suppliers, which supplies engines for the automaker that operates the modular consortium, in order to know how the new product development happens. Generally, the research has shown that the new product development influences the existing modular production system, and in the other side, this also influences the product design. However, to minimize the consequences, automakers launch measures in order to integrate the teams and suppliers, and adopt measures to simulate the process before starting of production.

Cette thèse étudie le rôle des différents régimes de propriété intellectuelle (DPI) et évalue ses conséquences sur l'industrie du logiciel. En outre, ce travail porte sur l'équilibre entre deux modèles de logiciels, celui des logiciels privés et celui des logiciels libres et open source, et cherche à évaluer leurs effets sur la performance des entreprises. Ainsi nous discutons dans un premier article les facteurs clés de la cinquième révolution technologique à travers le concept de paradigme technoéconomique (Freeman et Perez, 1988) et nous considérons l'open source comme le principal de ces facteurs. D'autre part, nous étudions les trois aspects des technologies logicielles. Les caractéristiques structurelles des logiciels, c'est-a-dire les économies de gamme (Panzar et Willig, 1981; Teece, 1980) et la modularité (Parnas, 1972; Langlois et Robertson, 1992) représentent les deux premiers. Le régime de propriété intellectuelle, qui est a l'origine des particularités institutionnelles du logiciel (Mazzeloni et Nelson, 1998b), représente le troisième aspect. Au sein de cette thèse nous utilisons différentes méthodologies et considérons plusieurs technologies logicielles pour répondre à nos questions de recherches. Les économies de gamme de logiciels sont étudiées à travers une simulation multi-agents. La recherche sur la modularité est effectuée par une analyse des brevets sur la technologie d'indexation de vidéo. La question des DPI est examinée dans deux chapitres différents. Dans un premier chapitre, une analyse de données de panel est faite pour démontrer l'effet du brevetage et de la contribution au projet du noyau Linux sur la performance des entreprises. Le second chapitre traite quant à lui d'un cas particulier où l'innovation ouverte est réalisée par un groupe de recherche en ingénierie du logiciel au sein d'Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs, Nozay, France. Ces exemples uniques ne peuvent conclure sur aucune tendance macro sur l'industrie du logiciel, mais cette thèse vise à alimenter les discussions sur les droits de propriété intellectuelle au sein de l'industrie du logiciel. / This thesis studies the role of the intellectual property right (IPR) regimes and its implications on the software industry. Moreover, it focuses on the balance of proprietary and free, libre and open source software (FLOSS) development models for innovative performance. In this thesis, first the concept of key factor of the fifth technological revolution, age of information and telecommunication is discussed within the techno-economic paradigm literature (Freeman and Perez, 1988). Then the three aspects of software technologies are investigated. The first two are the structural characteristics of software which are; economies of scope (Panzar and Willig, 1981; Teece, 1980) and modularity (Parnas, 1972; Langlois and Robertson, 1992). The last one is the IPR regimes which create the institutional peculiarities of software (Mazzeloni and Nelson, 1998b). Inthis thesis, different methodologies are used and several software technologies are considered to illustrate the research questions. Economies of scope of software is investigated by using an agent based simulation. The research on modularity is carried out by exploiting a patent analysis on the video indexing technology. The IPR issue is examined within two different chapters. In the first one, panel data analysis is used to understand the effect of patenting and contribution to the Linuxkernel project on the performance of _rms. The second one focuses on a case where open innovation is implemented by a software R&D group within Alcatel- Lucent Bell Labs, Nozay, France. These unique examples cannot give any macro trend on software industry but this thesis aims to contribute to the IPR discussions within the software industry.

Purpose – Agile manufacturing concept was first coined by Iacocca institute in 1991 as a new manufacturing paradigm in order to provide and ensure competitiveness in the emerging global manufacturing order. Afterward, a considerable number of studies have been conducted in this area. Reviewing these studies reveals that they mostly focus on agile manufacturing drivers, definition and characteristics but few of them propose practical solutions to achieve it. Moreover, among proposed approaches toward agility, the impact of product design has been less studied. However, the substantial impacts of product design on manufacturing firms are widely accepted. To fill this gap, this research aims to analyse how the product design affects the potential of being agile in a manufacturing firm. In this research the main focus is on the architecture of product as a part of its design. Methodology – Since this research requires synthesizing and bridging two separate fields, agile manufacturing and product architecture, the “literature review” method is adopted. Findings – Agile manufacturing has four main dimensions: drivers, capabilities, strategies and providers. To become an agile competitor, a manufacturing firm should concentrate on enriching a set of appropriate agility capabilities. Moreover, product architecture allocates functions to physical chunks (major building blocks of a product) and determines interfaces among chunks. The analysis of reviewed literature exhibits that product architecture has strong implications for agility capabilities. These implications might have both positive or negative effects which result in various trade-offs. Additionally, these trade-offs disclose this fact that there is not a superior architecture. Thus, a manufacturing firm is able to adopt suitable product architecture by considering the product architecture impacts on agility capabilities and related trade-offs. Value – This study organized and summarized a considerable number of researches’ outcomes in the product architecture area. In addition, it covers the lack of attention to product architecture in agile manufacturing literature. Also, it exhibits how product architecture may contribute to manufacturers which are moving toward agility. This report raises managers and practitioners’ awareness regarding product architecture potential and probable consequences of different choices that they make.

Thesis (M.S.)--Oregon State University, 2009. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 48-51). Also available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--City University of Hong Kong, 2005. / "Submitted to Department of Manufacturing Engineering and Engineering Management in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 230-247).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Drexel University, 2007. / Includes abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 125-129).

The Subtext project seeks to make programming fundamentally easier by altering the nature of programming languages and tools. This paper defines an operational semantics for an essential subset of the Subtext language. It also presents a fresh approach to the problems of mutable state, I/O, and concurrency.Inclusions reify copy & paste edits into persistent relationships that propagate changes from their source into their destination. Inclusions formulate a programming language in which there is no distinction between a program’s representation and its execution. Like spreadsheets, programs are live executions within a persistent runtime, and programming is direct manipulation of these executions via a graphical user interface. There is no need to encode programs into source text.Mutation of state is effected by the computation of hypothetical recursive variants of the state, which can then be lifted into new versions of the state. Transactional concurrency is based upon queued single-threaded execution. Speculative execution of queued hypotheticals provides concurrency as a semantically transparent implementation optimization.

O objetivo deste trabalho de pesquisa é realizar uma análise exploratória do desenvolvimento de novos produtos e produção em empresas do segmento automotivo que adotam a estratégia modular. A estratégia para a indústria automotiva é uma forma de simplificar a gestão de um produto, considerado complexo, num ambiente de intensa competição, inovação tecnológica e redução do ciclo de vida do produto. Na verdade, é um conjunto de conceitos que leva a novas formas de organizar o desenvolvimento do produto e a produção, possibilitando a transferência de atividades de projeto do produto e produção na cadeia produtiva. Para o delineamento da pesquisa foi utilizado o estudo de caso na análise de duas montadoras de veículos comerciais que produzem produtos semelhantes (caminhões e chassis de ônibus). Uma das montadoras opera com o sistema de consórcio modular e a outra, embora mais convencional, aplica o conceito de modularidade na linha de montagem final. O estudo de caso também foi utilizado na análise de dois fornecedores de primeiro nível, que fornecem motores para a montadora que opera o consórcio modular, sob a óptica do desenvolvimento de novos produtos e montagem do módulo no veículo. De uma forma ampla, a pesquisa revelou que os novos desenvolvimentos de produtos modulares influenciam o sistema produtivo existente e por outro lado, este também exerce influência no projeto do produto. Para minimizar as consequências as montadoras lançam medidas que integram os times de engenharia e fornecedores e adotam medidas para simulação do processo antes do início de produção. / The aim of this research paper is performing an exploratory analysis of the new product development and production in automotive companies that use the modular strategy. The strategy for the automotive industry is a way to simplify the management of complex products in an environment of intense competition, technological innovation and shorter product life cycles. Indeed, it is a set of concepts that lead to new way of organizing the product and production development, enabling the transfer of project activities and production in the chain. Aiming the research design, it was used the case study analysis in two automakers, which produces similar products (trucks and bus chassis). One of the automakers operates the modular consortium system, and the other, though more conventional, applies the modular concept in the final assembly line. Also, the case study was used in the analysis of two first tier suppliers, which supplies engines for the automaker that operates the modular consortium, in order to know how the new product development happens. Generally, the research has shown that the new product development influences the existing modular production system, and in the other side, this also influences the product design. However, to minimize the consequences, automakers launch measures in order to integrate the teams and suppliers, and adopt measures to simulate the process before starting of production.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-12T15:52:05Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 license.txt: 1748 bytes, checksum: 8a4605be74aa9ea9d79846c1fba20a33 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008 / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / Linhas de Produto de Software (LPS) englobam famílias de sistemas desenvolvidos a partir de artefatos reusáveis. Um fator importante durante a manutenção de LPS con- siste em decidir sobre qual mecanismo deve ser utilizado para reestruturar suas variações objetivando melhorar a modularidade de seus artefatos. Devido µa grande variedade de mecanismos, selecionar os corretos pode ser uma tarefa difícil. Por outro lado, selecionar os incorretos pode produzir efeitos negativos no custo de desenvolver a LPS. E importante salientar que este problema existe não somente no nível de código fonte, mas também em outros artefatos como requisitos de software e testes. Assim sendo, para reduzir tal problema no nível de testes automatizados, este trabalho prop~oe um modelo de decisão que ajuda desenvolvedores a escolher mecanismos para reestruturar variações de testes em LPS. Para construir o modelo, algumas variacões encontradas em casos de teste automatizados reais desenvolvidos pela Motorola foram analisadas. Neste caso, os testes servem para testar os sistemas de software dos telefones celulares da Motorola. Os testes lidam com as variacões dos diferentes celulares usando condicionais if-else. Portanto, dada uma variacão baseada em condicionais if-else, o modelo sugere um mecanismo para prover uma melhor modularidade da variacão. Adicionalmente, uma ferramenta para dar suporte aos desenvolvedores de LPS foi desenvolvida. A ferramenta recomenda os mecanismos de acordo com o modelo de decisão proposto. Aplicando o modelo de decisão e os mecanismos sugeridos por ele pode melhorar a modularidade das variações dos casos de teste e remover problemas como códigos dupli- cados. Ademais, mostra-se que a tarefa de reestruturar variações torna-se mais rápida e precisa quando a ferramenta é utilizada