The master’s thesis is focused around the mounting of an inner support structure to the Swedish warship Vasa and was given by Camatec Industriteknik AB. The Swedish warship Vasa is one of the greatest national treasures of Sweden. The ship was built high and narrow, therefore a small gust of wind made her capsize during her maiden journey. Today it is the world’s bestpreserved ship from the 17th century and has been on display for the public at the Vasa museum since the year 1990. The purpose of the master’s thesis was to generate and evaluate concepts for the mounting of the inner support structure to the Swedish warship Vasa. The master’s thesis had the following goals: To generate and analyse possible concepts regarding the mounting. Final proposals of the mounting created in CAD. FEM calculations of the final proposals to ensure that they handle the load conditions properly. The master’s thesis followed the methodical process of product development with the steps: pilot study, concept generation, concept selection and concept evaluation. Three concepts were selected for further analysis. Two concepts involved a timber tong around the hanging knees. One fastened in a present structure of the ship (concept Y2.1) and the other one attached clamping force created by a spring in the construction (concept Y2.2). The third concept was a metal sheet between the main wales at the outside of the ship (concept G5). The concept Y2.1 was eliminated due to high local stress concentrations at the attachment in the ship. The concept Y2.2 showed some desirable features, including visual representation if tension was present. However, it was not ensured that the concept can keep the surface pressure below the maximum 0.15 MPa. Another uncertainty with the concept was the behaviour of the timber tongs if movement of the hull occurred. Therefore, the concept Y2.2 needs additional work before it can be continued or eliminated. The concept G5 handled the loading case without exceeding the required surface pressure. However, a decision whether the metal sheets would be to visible for visitors needs to be taken before continuing with or eliminate the concept. In summary, the concepts need further analysing before a final concept selection can be done. / Examensarbetet har fokuserat på infästningen av en inre stödstrukturen till regalskeppet Vasa och har utförts tillsammans med Camatec Industriteknik AB. Vasaskeppet är idag en av Sveriges största nationalskatter. Skeppet byggdes högt och smalt, således fick en mild bris henne att kantra under sin jungfruresa. Det är idag världens mest bevarade skepp från 1600- talet och har funnits på utställning sen 1990. Syftet med examensarbetet var att generera och utvärdera koncept för infästningen av den inre stödstrukturen till regalskeppet Vasa. Målen med examensarbetet var: Att generera och analysera möjliga koncept till infästningen. Modellera de valda koncepten i CAD. Utföra FEM- simuleringar på de valda koncepten för att säkerställa att lasterna fördelas rätt. Examensarbetet följer produktutvecklingsprocessen och har behandlat följande steg: förstudie, konceptgenerering, konceptval samt konceptutvärdering. Tre koncept valdes att tas vidare för djupare analys. Två koncept involverade en timmersax runt knäna på skeppet. Ett som fästes i skeppets befintliga struktur (koncept Y2.1) medans det andra fäste enbart med klämkraft som uppkom tack vare en fjäder i konstruktionen (koncept Y2.2). Det tredje konceptet var en plåt mellan berghultarna på utsidan av skeppet (koncept G5). Konceptet Y2.1 eliminerades på grund av de lokalt höga spänningskoncentrationer som uppkom. Konceptet Y2.2 visade upp önskvärda funktioner, såsom att visuellt påvisa drag. Dock är det inte säkerställt att konceptet genererar ett yttryck under det maximala trycket på 0.15 MPa. Ytterligare är timmersaxens beteende vid rörelse av skrovet osäkert. Således krävs fortsatt arbete med konceptet Y2.2 innan det kan tas vidare eller elimineras. Konceptet G5 hanterade lasterna utan att överskrida den maximala gränsen för yttrycket. Däremot måste ett beslut fattas, angående om plåtarna mellan berghultarna är för synlig eller inte, innan konceptet kan tas vidare eller elimineras. Sammanfattningsvis behöver vidare analys av koncepten ske innan ett slutligt konceptval kan fattas.

This report covers the development process of an induction powered toaster for the company C3. This included its interior function as well as its exterior design. The project resulted in a functional prototype of an induction powered toaster bearing a design language that fits into C3s existing product catalogue.

At the electro remelting slag (ESR) facility at Uddeholm, cylindrical steel ingots are produced in several different sizes. The ESR process requires a “starting step” that consist of a 20mm thick steel plate and is a little larger than the diameter of the ingot. During casting the steel plate is inevitably welded to the ingot, also a protective slag layer is also present and flows on top of the melt when the ingot is produced. This layer is sacrificial and is removed before forging. The plate consists of a different and unwanted material composition and must be removed at some point to ensure the best material properties of the ingot. Current process steps at Uddeholm causes the steel plate to be smeared out on the high-quality ingot. The “impure” part of the ingot leads to extra waste and costs after forging. The ingots are cast vertically but needs to be positioned horizontally to be transported to the forge, this is done using an overhead crane and a clamp. This maneuver exerts excessive stress that damages the crane and the clamp sometimes fails and drops the ingot. Because of the high-risk steps during ingot handling as well as the extra waste that is created due to the starting step, the purpose of this thesis is to develop a solution that can: move the ingots from a vertical to a horizontal position in a controlled manner, a method to remove the starting step before forging and reduce the overall risks during ingot handling. The goal is to develop a complete concept that solves the problems mentioned so that the solution can later be realized.To get a deeper understanding of the current procedures and problems, visits and meetings at Uddeholm were carried out. This master thesis builds on the principle of the product development process. Interviews with operators, managers, and other impacted employees at Uddeholm were conducted in order to specify a product specification. To make the project more fathomable, six sub functions were defined. Later a concept generation session using the principles of brainstorming was held with engineers and managers at Uddeholm to find new, plausible solutions to the problems. The results from the session were reviewed and some solutions were discarded directly. Solutions that passed the screening was scored using a weighted decision matrix based on a Kesselring matrix.The chosen concepts were: milling to remove the starting step, “rotary axis grab” to rotate the ingots, a conveyor belt to transport slag, a vacuum and conveyor belt to remove chips, a roll bed with V-pallets to handle and transport the ingots, and let the slag fall of naturally when horizontal. These solutions fulfill almost all of Uddeholm’s requirements and will significantly increase the safety and profitability. The new solutions also bring in high flexibility for production and will free up time for the operators.The lifting tool of the solution needed to be structurally verified to prove it is a valid option. This was done by analyzing the maximum stress in one part of the tool. The results gave that it was indeed a feasible solution.The whole product development process has proven helpful for this machine system. It has especially proven useful for documenting all decisions made throughout the project. This makes it easier for Uddeholm to adopt the solution and develop it further and later realize it.

Many companies rely on successful product development as a means to increase their revenues and expand their operations. Market pull, the most common form of product development, begins with a specific customer, and focuses on how to satisfy that customer's needs. Technology push is a product development process where a technology is first discovered, then embodied in products that may be marketed to specific customers. Technology push presents several obstacles not encountered in market pull processes, such as a lack of a defined market, lack of established processes and difficulty in execution. These complications keep technology push from being more widely used. However, when successful, technology push also presents opportunity for rapid innovation, the discovery of disruptive technologies, and the ability to produce several products from a single R&D effort. The existing literature for accomplishing technology push product development is presented at a high level. The research for this thesis provides a step-by-step method for generating and evaluating concepts in the technology push product development process. The model for accomplishing these steps was generated by taking the existing Technology Application Selection (TAS) process and supplying the necessary detail to allow product developers to complete the necessary steps. It also explains in detail several of the steps outlined in existing technology push processes. In order to lend credence to the process presented in this thesis, a number of experiments were conducted, with the participants being asked to evaluate the process steps. Their feedback was used to ensure that the process met the predetermined success criteria for the product development process.

During early stages of the design process, ideation methods are used to generate a set of potential solutions based on a particular need. Solutions to design problems generally require both technology and user actions (or tactics) of some sort, although solution ideas may omit explicit mention of either technology or tactics. Previous research suggests that an explicit consideration of tactics in early-stage ideation enables design teams to improve the quantity, quality, variety, and novelty of their idea sets. In this paper, a novel ideation method known as the Random Prompts method is presented, and its performance is evaluated against a Brainwriting method. The results show that the Random Prompts method improves the overall quantity, novelty, and variety of idea sets over the Brainwriting method. In addition, the techniques used to encourage tactics ideation in both methods cause a significant increase in the fraction of ideas containing tactics when compared to sample ideation results from the literature. These conclusions hold value for improving design space exploration and co-development of tactics and technology.

For any product development process, limited time and resources are always a focus for the engineer. However, will the overall program goals be achieved with the provided time and resources? Uncertainty analysis is a tool that is capable of providing the answer to that question. Product development process uncertainty analysis employs previous knowledge in modeling, experimentation, and manufacturing in an innovative approach for analyzing the entire process. This research was initiated with a pilot project, a four-bar-slider mechanism, and an uncertainty analysis was completed for each individual product development step. The uncertainty of the final product was then determined by combining uncertainties from the individual steps. The uncertainty percentage contributions of each term to the uncertainty of the final product were also calculated. The combination of uncertainties in the individual steps and calculation of the percentage contributions of the terms have not been done in the past. New techniques were developed to evaluate the entire product development process in an uncertainty sense. The techniques developed in this work will be extended to other processes in future work.

Given that the focus of strategic management research is understanding the determinants of firm performance, and that product development capabilities have been shown to influence firm performance, the research question this dissertation attempts to answer is: what factors influence a firm's product development capabilities? Building on the resource based view and evolutionary theory, this dissertation proposes that firms leverage knowledge generating resources to modify or develop their routines. Firm level routines are theorized to influence the capabilities of the firm. This dissertation focuses on two firm-level product development capabilities: effectiveness and efficiency. Effectiveness refers to a firm's ability to develop desirable products and efficiency refers to the firm's ability to develop those products quickly. The knowledge generating resources this dissertation examines is the firm's prior experience in product development and the firm's relational resources pertinent to product development. Specifically, this dissertation develops theory on four types of experience: market niche, component technology, platform technology, and general product development. Additionally, theory is developed regarding the effects of platform relational resources, as well as the breadth and depth of co-developers a firm utilizes in the development of their products. Using the videogame development industry as the empirical context, few hypothesized relationships are statistically or substantively significant. Prior experience with component technologies lowered the effectiveness of a firm' product development capabilities, but were found to increase efficiency. In addition, older firms tended to create more desirable products despite controlling for the four types of experience which may suggest that the age of the firm contributes something to the firm's ability to create desirable products beyond specific types of experience. This dissertation makes contributions to the theory on how capabilities are developed and enhanced by introducing mechanisms regarding how firms can leverage knowledge generating resources to improve their capabilities. More specifically, this dissertation provides contributes to the product development literature as well as the literature on how experience and relational resources influence a firm's product development capabilities. / Ph. D.

There are often discrepancies in how a product is perceived in different representation media employed in typical product development processes. The first goal of this research project was to determine how visual illusions influence a designer's perception of a product across three representations: industrial design sketches, computer aided design (CAD) models, and physical prototypes (FDM rapid prototyping). A visualization experiment was conducted in which participants were asked to report how they perceived the shape and size of certain features, representing two types of illusions across the three model representations. Their statements were analyzed to identify the trends of how these two illusions affect overall appearance, categorized by representation type and the users' backgrounds (i.e., specialization and years of experience). The participants included students and professionals with various levels of engineering and industrial design experience. The analysis shows that there are differences in how designers see models depending on the representation media, and to some degree depending on the participants' professional background. The second goal was to explore the process of identifying such illusions automatically during the design process. In this regard, a discussion on how to implement the results from the visualization experiment is presented. Emphasis is on the potential development of a tool in CAD systems that would identify illusory effects and subsequently suggest potential design solutions. The possibility of using spectral analysis (fast Fourier transform) for an automated shape recognition capability in CAD systems is discussed. / Master of Science

With increasing demands from customers, companies face the challenges of shortening the new product development (NPD) period, reducing development cost and increasing development efficiency. High quality and efficiency of NPD can increase the chance for companies to be competitive on the market. Forming up cross-functional teams becomes a popular way of maximizing the knowledge then increase the development quality and efficiency. However, it is challenging to integrate the resources from different functions and even more challenging when the resources are from different countries. To overcome the integration challenges can increase the efficiency of NPD projects therefore finally win global market shares. This study’s purpose is to identify and analyze integration challenges experienced by a verification team involved in global NPD and to suggest how those challenges can be managed by answering two research questions: 1) What are the integration challenges with the current work process encountered by the global verification team? 2) How can the integration challenges be met in the improved work process? The case study is used as the research method in order to get deep insight of the challenges that a global verification team faces. VSM Group AB, an international leading sewing company is selected as the case company.  The case team, a global verification team locates both in Sweden and China, plays the role of verification work within NPD process. The case team verifies the design and new products in the process.  Through interviews, observation and literature reviews, the challenges in this global verification team are identified. It is found that the case team needs to overcome language barriers, culture difference, task planning and formalization and standardization on work performance during integration. Based on the investigations, a set of solutions are proposed in the end to meet the challenges. These solutions are an improved work process, work performance system, training program and uniformed documentation. These proposals are inspired by the integration mechanisms such as formalization and standardization, special reports etc and then fit them into the case team context. By simulation and evaluation the solutions within the global verification team, the feedback on the proposals helped for improvement. This case study at VSM is an empirical example of implementation of integration mechanisms into a real life context.

Product development is a particularly critical intervention point for the transformation of society towards sustainability. Current socio-ecological impacts over product life-cycles are evidence that current practices are insufficient. The aim of this thesis is to form a foundation for sustainable product development through the integration of a sustainability perspective into product development procedures and processes. Literature reviews and theoretical considerations as well as interviews, questionnaires, observations, testing and action research through case studies in various companies have indicated gaps in current methodology and have guided the development of a new general Method for Sustainable Product Development (MSPD). This method combines a framework for strategic sustainable development based on backcasting from basic sustainability principles with a standard concurrent engineering development model. A modular system of guiding questions, derived by considering the sustainability principles and the product life-cycle, is the key feature. Initial testing indicates that this MSPD works well for identification of sustainability problems as well as for generation of possible solutions. However, these tests also indicate that there is sometimes a desire for a quick overview of the sustainability performance of a specific product category. This is to guide early strategic decisions before the more comprehensive and detailed work with the MSPD is undertaken, or, alternatively, when an overview is sufficient to make decisions. In response, a Template for Sustainable Product Development (TSPD) approach is presented as a supplement to the MSPD. To generate products that support sustainable development of society it is necessary to combine sustainability assessments with improvements of technical product properties. An introductory procedure for such sustainability-driven design optimization is suggested based on a case study. For maximum efficiency of a company in finding viable pathways towards sustainability, it is also necessary to coordinate different methods and tools that are useful for sustainable product development and integrate them into the overall decision-making processes at different levels in companies. To find gaps in the sustainability integration in a company’s decision system, an assessment approach is suggested based on case studies. A general conclusion from this research is that the support needed for making sustainability-related decisions are not systematically integrated in companies today. However, this thesis also indicates that it is possible to create generic methods and tools that aid the integration of sustainability aspects in companies’ strategic decision-making and product development. These methods and tools can be used to guide the prioritization of investments and technical optimization on the increasingly sustainability-driven market, thus providing a foundation for competitive sustainable product development.