No description available.

No description available.

D.Ing. / A development model for complex products in a multi-disciplinary development environment, is the focus of this research. Currently there are a few development models in use in industry, however it is shown in this research that these models are based on one or at best two development criteria, for instance TQM focuses on quality but the other development criteria do not feature strongly in TQM. The aim of this research is to develop a generic model for the development of complex, multi-disciplinary products, such as missiles, that have at least mechanical and electronic engineering involvement. The researcher presented a rationale and a problem statement as the starting point of the research. The problem being the scarcity of a development model that includes the TRAMM development criteria into the early stages of development in a multi-disciplinary environment for complex products. The problem statement stipulated the environment and the research essence. The need for a development model that includes TRAMM in a multi-disciplinary development environment for complex products is emphasised. The research objectives and the main definitions used in this research are given. The TRAMM criteria are clearly defined. The TRAMM criteria were emphasised. Currently these development criteria are each researched in an isolated, specialist field. It is shown that not all the TRAMM criteria are included in the current development models. However, the TRAMM criteria as isolated development criteria are fields well documented except in a methodology on how to implement these in the early stages of development. The TRAMM criteria are currently add-on development. The intention with this research is to integrate the TRAMM criteria into the early stages of the development. The researcher gives the possible methodology to include the TRAMM criteria in a development model. The current development models are introduced. The investigated development models are DFR/DFM, IPD, TQM and CE. The strong and weak characteristics of each model are highlighted. A possible methodology on how to incorporate the strong development criteria of the specific model in an integrated development model. The five development phases of the MPS development model are discussed. The MPS development model consists of a number of modules that are used for certain development tasks within the global development process. The contingency and processes of this modular model are one of the major problems. An integrated development model should solve this problem. The MPS development model is the basis for the IPS model. Two product developments based on the MPS model are identified and discussed. During the development of these products, requirements were raised and further development criteria were identified and included in the MPS development model. The development criteria that are introduced in these two developments are highlighted and possible methods on how to include it in an integrated model are discussed. Summaries of four of the literature-surveyed models are ascertained before it is evaluated. An evaluation matrix consisting of 84 development criteria is proposed. This matrix is based on the literature-survey and the current development models. This matrix includes development criteria from these models. The matrix incorporates the TRAMM criteria, management, design, organisation and project policies. The matrix makes a comparison between the different development models including the MPS model. It is clear from the comparison that the different models were developed with a certain aspect of development in mind. These models do not include all the development criteria given in the 84 criteria evaluation matrix. A model is proposed that includes these criteria and that can be tailored according to certain user requirements. An integrated model that includes the criteria given in the evaluation matrix, which includes the TRAMM criteria, is required. Such a model is proposed. This model is named the IPS development model. The IPS development model for development in a multi-disciplinary environment is described. This model is based on the MPS and literature-surveyed development models. From the evaluation matrix, it is clear that some of the criteria are not included in any of the literature-surveyed models or the MPS development model. The inclusion of these criteria in the IPS model is part of the contribution of this research. The research contributions are highlighted. The IPS development model is a model for development in a multi-disciplinary environment for complex products. It can be tailored for various fields including mechanical and electrical development fields. The IPS model concentrates on a 5-phase development structure. This structure concentrates on the management aspects of development. Once the management phase (phase 0) is in place, the development can start. This phase is called the concept, exploration and definition phase (phase 1). During this phase the concepts are explored and defined. In phase 1, no hardware is built. Hardware that demonstrates new technology or reduces design risk is the only exception to this rule. If all the concepts are explored, the demonstration and validation phase (phase 2) can start. The demonstration and validation phase includes the TRAMM criteria of the development. Phase 3, the full-scale engineering development phase is the phase where the hardware is designed and this phase includes the design aspects of the development. Phase 3 is the last phase covered in this research; the other two phases are the production, commissioning and support phases. These phases are included as the framework for the feedback path of the development. The IPS development model is circulated in one of the intended development environments and evaluated. The respondent's results show that most of the criteria in the evaluation matrix are significant the development. On an average scale, the TRAMM criteria are regarded as more than 75% important in this specific multi-disciplinary development environment.

[by] Glen L. Urban. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (MTech (Design))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2015. / Design as a field of practice is constantly evolving and has predominantly been used to stimulate and facilitate the humanisation of new technologies, so that they are usable and desirable for the capitalist economy (Boehnert, 2013, p. 14). With the evolution of the commercial and economic systems, the role of the designer now needs a shift so that it is able to facilitate new and appropriate interactions (Manzini, 2015, p. 180). This thesis explores what some of those interactions may look like and the role that design may be able to play in assisting them. Enabling society to be better equipped to communicate and collaborate with industry and academia, and vice versa, may be beneficial. The more society’s contributions can be heard, acknowledged and implemented, the better the economy may function. Increasing the transparency and understanding of these systems would potentially allow for less corruption and greater collaboration within and between them, possibly allowing for improved innovation. Once entrepreneurs are better equipped to integrate and take advantage of the institutional structures that are in place, this could drive economic development forward, and more informed and effective decisions might be implemented. Institutionally, through a better understanding of their resources and networks, such research could also lead to the implementation of better management and leadership strategies. This thesis focuses on the role of design as a catalyst for product development in the Western Cape. The concept of enabling innovative product ideas through design is analysed through an examination of three current case studies being developed in this region. To contextualise this a bit further, what is examined are the processes, developments and relationships, within and across the structures of the university, civil society and the design industry. This is explored to identify how each of these groups may support the design process, and where they may inhibit it. The primary objective is to provide a foundational road-map to enable innovative ideas from which citizen projects, universities and the design industry may benefit and continue to build upon. In this way, it may be possible to create a more synergetic relationship between universities, the design industry and civil society, or at least to make that relationship more transparent and mutually beneficial.

Due to a progressive market shift to a customer-driven environment, the influence of engineering changes on the product's market success is becoming more prominent. This situation affects many long lead-time product industries including aircraft manufacturing. Derivative development has been the key strategy for many aircraft manufacturers to survive the competitive market and this trend is expected to continue in the future. Within this environment of design adaptation and variation, the main market advantages are often gained by the fastest aircraft manufacturers to develop and produce their range of market offerings without any costly mistakes. This realization creates an emphasis on the efficiency of the redesign process, particularly on the handling of engineering changes. However, most activities involved in the redesign process are supported either inefficiently or not at all by the current design methods and tools, primarily because they have been mostly developed to improve original product development. In view of this, the main goal of this research is to propose an aircraft redesign methodology that will act as a decision-making aid for aircraft designers in the change implementation planning of derivative developments. The proposed method, known as Strategic Planning of Engineering Changes (SPEC), combines the key elements of the product redesign planning and change management processes. Its application is aimed at reducing the redesign risks of derivative aircraft development, improving the detection of possible change effects propagation, increasing the efficiency of the change implementation planning and also reducing the costs and the time delays due to the redesign process. To address these challenges, four research areas have been identified: baseline assessment, change propagation prediction, change impact analysis and change implementation planning. Based on the established requirements for the redesign planning process, several methods and tools that are identified within these research areas have been abstracted and adapted into the proposed SPEC method to meet the research goals. The proposed SPEC method is shown to be promising in improving the overall efficiency of the derivative aircraft planning process through two notional aircraft system redesign case studies that are presented in this study.

This work proposes a framework of concept generation and evaluation that takes into consideration the benefit of creativity and innovation in current market trends. By educating engineers in how to increase creativity in concept design and assess it quantitatively, the next generation of designers will be a step ahead of the market. This research begins with an in-depth survey of current creativity assessment methods in engineering in order to determine where the limitations currently lie in this field of study. The limitations discovered based on this unique analysis were used as motivation for the development of the proposed creativity assessment method. Specifically, we introduce a set of metrics that break down concepts to their component and subfunction level to assess the novelty and quality of component solutions ��� called the Comparative Creativity Assessment (CCA) Method. Secondly, we break down market-tested innovative products to isolate innovation information to utilize in concept generation inspiration ��� called the Repository of Innovative Products (RIP). Finally, revisions to the initial CCA method and RIP are proposed and analysis of past data results are compared to the new revised results. Revisions to the CCA method include additional metrics that factor in interaction effects from function pairing and component assemblies deemed innovative as well as eliminate evaluator subjectivity in the analysis. Observations from the experiments conducted are presented in a Lessons Learned chapter. / Graduation date: 2013

Researchers have paid relatively little attention to the fact that most design activities are actually more like redesign. These activities are characterized by an attempt to leverage experience, knowledge, and the capital that a company has already invested into existing engineering systems. In this dissertation, it is proposed that an approach be developed to aid designers in making decisions in redesign problems when there exist systems to be leveraged and multiple new systems to be created. In addition, strategy is introduced to the problem through the consideration that new systems may not be offered all at once, as is often assumed in product family design research. In this dissertation, the aim of the designer is assumed to be a creation, through redesign, of a series of new systems with desirable and distinct performance levels. In addition, a plan is required to involve as little redesign effort throughout the life of the family of systems as possible The proposed approach is based upon the concepts of Constructal Theory and previous work to create methods for the design of mass customized families of products. The existing methods are abstracted and heavily modified through the infusion of the compromise Decision Support Problems at all stages of the decision-making process. In addition, two indices are developed to represent considerations unique to redesign as opposed to original design. These indices for redesign effort and commonality value are utilized in the overall objective formulation for the approach. Through a thorough validation process and a large number of redesign scenarios, it is shown that the overall approach proposed can lead the designer towards promising redesign plans involving leveraging of existing systems, but that the constructal-inspired approach in and of itself has certain limitations when applied to redesign.

In the modem automotive industry product times to market are being increasingly compressed. In the earthmoving and construction machine industry this is also true with the manufacturer having to respond to new customer requirements quickly and decisively. Virtual prototyping is a vital tool in the vehicle engineer's armoury, allowing a large portion of developmental investigation to be done on the virtual model with the attendant savings in time and cost and allowing often dangerous manoeuvres to be predicted and investigated prior to actual physical prototype testing. The University of Natal BELL Equipment collaborative effort involves the vehicle dynamics modelling and model validation of a BELL Equipment manufactured B40C Articulated Dump Truck (ADT). The modelling was completed using the multibody system (MBS) simulation software package, ADAMS. Initial modelling and simulation results are presented with specific attention paid to the introduction of valid data for compliant joints in the MBS as well as modelling of the tire. The physical testing of the ADT is also presented as well as a discussion of the data acquisition system. Key results from the physical testing of the ADT are also presented and discussed. / Thesis (M.Sc.Eng.)-University of Natal,Durban, 2003.

Orientador: Yuzo Iano / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia Elétrica e de Computação / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-25T04:44:14Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Schneider_HomeroMauricio_D.pdf: 3315215 bytes, checksum: 24f2739a680bd64590516d28c5900606 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014 / Resumo: Um conceito chave na área de customização em massa é o de família de produtos. Embora o projeto de uma família de produtos é uma tarefa difícil e desafiadora, derivar os membros da família de produtos para atender os requisitos de clientes individuais pode ser uma tarefa de design rotineira. Neste trabalho, propomos uma abordagem formal para modelar o processo de customização de famílias de produtos, que alcançar este objetivo. De fato, construímos uma teoria para a customização de famílias de produtos. Esta abordagem é baseada em uma estrutura de conhecimento para a representação de famílias de produtos que combina uma estrutura de produto genérica e uma rede de restrições estendida com funções de design. O método para derivar os membros da família de produtos é um processo de instanciação com duas fases. Primeiramente, uma solução para o modelo de rede de restrição consistente com os requisitos do cliente é encontrada. Em seguida, esta solução é utilizada para transformar a estrutura de produto genérica em uma estrutura especifica que corresponde a um membro da família de produtos. Neste trabalho, provamos que, se o modelo de rede de restrição estendida com funções de design satisfaz algumas condições de modelagem, então encontrar soluções se torna um processo livre de retrocessos. Embora existam outros trabalhos na literatura que também afirmam ser livre de retrocessos, um fato notável sobre a nossa abordagem é que conseguimos isso através da introdução de conhecimento sobre a família de produtos, em vez de recorrer ao poder computacional e pré-processamento como naquelas abordagens. Outro aspecto notável da nossa abordagem é que os componentes podem ser projetados como parte do processo de personalização através das funções de design. Isto implica que é possível dispor de um processo de customização eficiente sem comprometer a flexibilidade da família de produtos. Na conclusão deste trabalho, argumentamos que a nossa abordagem pode lidar com problemas de customização que estão fora da área de configuração de produtos. Dois apêndices também são adicionados à tese. Um deles é uma modelagem completa de uma família de produtos Chave de Transferência Automática (ATS) baseado em nossa abordagem. Este exemplo é usado no corpo principal da tese para ilustrar os conceitos que estão sendo introduzidos. A outra é uma implementação computacional do primeiro estágio do processo de customização da família de produtos ATS / Abstract: Product family is a key concept is the area of mass customisation. Although the design of a product family is a difficult and challenging task, to derive members of the product family to meet the requirements of individual customers can be a routine design task. In this work, we propose a formal approach to model the customisation of product families that achieves this goal. In fact, we are setting up a theory for the customization of product families. This approach is based on a knowledge framework for the representation of product families, which combines a generic product structure and a constraint network extended with design functions. The method for deriving members of the product family is a two-stage instantiation process. First, a solution to the constraint network model consistent with the customer requirements is found. Next, this solution is used to transform the generic product structure into a specific structure that corresponds to a member of the product family. In this work, we prove that if the constraint network model extended with design functions satisfies a few modelling conditions, then to find solutions become a backtrack-free process. Although there are other works in the literature that also claim to be backtrack-free, a remarkable fact about our approach is that we achieve this by the introduction of knowledge about the product family, instead of resorting to computational power and pre-processing as in those approaches. Another remarkable aspect of our approach is that components can be designed as part of the customisation process using the design functions. This implies that it is possible to have an efficient customisation process without compromising the flexibility of the product family. In the conclusion of this work, we argue that our approach can deal with customisation problems outside the product configuration area. Two appendixes are also added to the thesis. One is a compete modelling of the Automatic Transfer Switch (ATS) product family using our approach. This example is used in the main body of the thesis to illustrate the concepts that are being introduced. The other one is the computational implementation of the first-stage customisation process of the ATS product family / Doutorado / Telecomunicações e Telemática / Doutor em Engenharia Elétrica