Manufacturing companies have traditionally focused their design and development activities on realizing technical and engineered aspects of physical artifacts based on performance requirements. The ever-changing business climate, with its increased pace during the past decades, has forced industries to continuously innovate their approach toward the development of new products. Pressured also by global competition, manufacturing companies need to reconsider the traditional concept of realizing value via goods production, and shift towards realizing value through product-service combinations. Companies have begun to recognize that gaining competitive advantage and expanding market shares is not achievable purely through continuous technical improvements. Rather, it is necessary to develop a closer relationship to the customer to gain a deeper understanding of expectations, needs, and perceived value. From a development perspective, the overarching problem within complex systems such as those in which cars, aircraft, and excavators are manufactured, or healthcare is provided, is that the focus on customer value is likely to become blurred since it is difficult to understand the impact a change in any single component in the overall system has on value, and to determine a new function’s impact on future scenarios. The main goals of this thesis are to provide an understanding of key challenges when considering the value different design alternatives provide in the conceptual phases of product development taking the automotive industry as case study, and to explore how to support a multi-disciplinary design team in making value-conscious decisions when dealing with new product-service offerings. The research approach has involved data collection through participation in, and facilitation of, product-service design workshops in the automotive industry. Also, it has involved follow-up meetings and interviews, as well as a review of literature on state-of-the-art methods in early conceptual design phases, which describes the advantages and disadvantages of the different frameworks. The primary finding of the study is that determination of the impact of different PSS design options on customer value becomes more challenging since new elements are introduced (e.g., new business models and services). The design team requires more holistic competences in order to more fully understand changing contexts; and new methods and tools are needed in order to establish a base to define, discuss and assess what “uncontested customer value” is, and link it to the different product-service elements of the system. Secondly, this thesis proposes a conceptual approach for value simulation and assessment of different design options, where the iterative use of personas and scenario generation is combined with value modeling and computer-based simulation techniques, enabling a quick “what-if” analysis of the various options, facilitating the identification of promising combinations of product and service elements that provide higher customer value.

This thesis has been carried out together with Kalmar Global’s Innovation Center and covers a concept study about weight reduction of the telescopic boom of the Reachstacker DRG 450.The reason for this weight reduction is to ease Kalmar’s transition from fossil fueled to electric driven vehicles since less weight reduces energy consumption and leaves more room for batteries. The main focus of the study is to test a wide array of cross sections for the boom with the aim of weight saving. During the thesis both meshless and traditional finite element calculations are used when utilising simulation-driven design to optimise the boom. The study concludes that using a narrower octagonal cross section, improved material quality and adapting the positions of the mounts can decrease the weight by 23% with also decreasing the material cost by 13%.

Detta examensarbete undersöker möjligheten att tillämpa tidiga och ej så beräkningstunga CFD-simuleringar (’Computational Fluid Dynamics’) för optimering av gasväxlingskomponenter tidigt i produktutvecklingsprocessen. Examensarbetet har innefattat framtagande av generellt applicerbara inställningar och riktlinjer vid modellering av gasväxlingskomponenter med programvaran OpenFOAM, optimerade för att nyttja så låg beräkningskraft som möjligt men fortfarande erhålla tillräckligt noggranna och pålitliga resultat. Rapporten ger en teoretiskt genomlysning med motivering av simuleringsrelaterade val i OpenFOAM i syfte att validera och efter behov justera de inställningar och parameterval ansatta i det befintliga Excel skriptet – framtaget av avdelningen med ansvar för avgasefterbehandlingssystem – som automatiserar uppställningen av OpenFOAM:s simuleringsrelaterade filstruktur. Detta i syfte att erhålla och säkerställa pålitliga resultat vid användning av skriptet anpassat för simulering av gasväxlingskomponenter. Rapporten redovisar även bakomliggande analyser för olika inställningar och val i OpenFOAM i syfte att tjäna som välgrundade riktlinjer genom hela CFD-processen; såsom för skapande av geometriska modeller, generering av volymsnät, åtgärder för att säkerställa konvergens samt uppställning och tolkning av resultatet. En av examensarbetets leveranser är en metodbeskrivning utformad med praktiska riktlinjer för genomförandet av hela CFD-processen med avsedda programvaror samt med tillhörande praxis avseende simuleringsrelaterade val genom processen. Ett antal genomförda fallstudier i examensarbetet visar att OpenFOAM har potential att utföra initiala och indikativa simuleringar för att mer tidseffektivt möjliggöra en bredare idégenerering i konceptutvecklingsfasen. / This thesis investigates the possibility of applying early and not so computational heavy simulations using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) for optimization of gas exchange components early in the product development process. The scope of the thesis includes the development of generally applicable settings and guidelines – documented in a methodology – when modelling gas exchange components with the software OpenFOAM, optimized to use as low computational power as possible but still obtaining sufficiently accurate and reliable data. The report consists of a theoretical study and motives for simulation-related choices in OpenFOAM in order to adjust and validate the settings and parameter choices applied in the existing Excel script – developed by the department responsible for exhaust aftertreatment systems – that automates the set-up of OpenFOAM's simulation-related file structure. This in order to obtain and ensure reliable results using the script adapted to the environment for gas exchange components. The report also presents underlying analyses for different settings and choices in order to serve as well-founded guidelines throughout the CFD-process; such as the creation of geometric models, the generation of mesh, measures to ensure convergence, and the set-up and interpretation of the results. One of the deliverables of the thesis is a method description designed with practical guidelines for the entire CFD-process with intended software’s and with associated best practices in regards of simulation-related choices throughout the process. A number of case studies – that has been simulated in this thesis – show that OpenFOAM has the potential to perform initial and indicative simulations enabling a more time-efficiently and broader ideation in the concept development phase.