No description available.

A significant change is taking place in manufacturing company strategies around the globe. With new monitoring and service methods, new opportunities of product use and service provision emerge. The manufacturing companies once focused on mere product manufacture, now have started to provide ‘systemic solutions’, i.e. products combined with service packages, which are often referred to as Product-Service Systems (PSS). Currently, there is not a well-established feedback mechanism between service and design. The aim of this research is to develop a methodology to capture, represent, and re-use service knowledge to support product design. For the accomplishment of this aim an extensive literature review of the related themes to the research area took place. It was found that the feedback from service to design is fundamental for the enhancement of product performance; however, the existing literature in this area is not adequate. The industrial investigation led to the realisation that there is not an established mechanism in place to show how service knowledge (SK) can be used by designers. An in- depth investigation took place with the collaboration of, in total, four UK manufacturing companies. The author studied both the conceptual and detailed design, focusing on the design requirements (DR) and the design/service features (DF/SF) respectively. The first step was the capture of SK and its representation using Protégé software. Following this, at the conceptual design stage, SK can be re-used through the DR-SK tool. The two main purposes of the tool are the knowledge retrieval by designers, and the identification of gaps in SK. At the detailed design stage, designers can access SK through the DF-SK tool, and the developed knowledge templates. The SKaD framework was created, as a result of the amalgamation among the SKaD methodology, the knowledge templates, and the tools developed to link SK and DR, SF, and DF. Conclusively, the framework was applied on case studies within the pump manufacturing and aerospace industries, and its purpose (to aid designers accessing and re-using SK) was validated by experts within the collaborating organisations. As a result of this research’s findings, the service personnel can capture SK in a structured manner, which can then be re- used by product designers at both the conceptual and detailed design stage.

Thesis (Master)--İzmir Institute of Technology, İzmir, 2006 / Keywords: Modular design, mass production, mas customization, customization. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 96-99).

Der Untersuchungsgegenstand der vorliegenden Arbeit ist, die mit dem Begriff „Design Thinking“ verbundenen Diskurse zu bestimmen und deren Themen, Konzepte und Bezüge herauszuarbeiten. Diese Zielstellung ergibt sich aus den mehrfachen Widersprüchen und Vieldeutigkeiten, die die gegenwärtigen Verwendungen des Design-Thinking-Begriffs charakterisieren und den kohärenten Gebrauch in Wissenschaft und Wirtschaft erschweren. Diese Arbeit soll einen Beitrag dazu leisten, „Design Thinking“ in den unterschiedlichen Diskurszusammenhängen grundlegend zu verstehen und für zukünftige Verwendungen des Design-Thinking-Begriffs eine solide Argumentationsbasis zu schaffen. / This thesis’ research objective is to distinguish the discourses to which the term “design thinking” refers, to carve out their central themes and concepts, as well as to debate the conceptual relations between them. The background of this objective lies in the ambiguity and the inherent contradictions of how “design thinking” is generally applied and referred to, hindering coherent and consistent usage both in academia and the business world. This thesis shall therefore contribute to elucidate the diversity of meanings of design thinking as well as to point out conceptual interrelations and coherences in order to establish a more solid foundation for future design thinking discourse.

The use of email as a communication and information sharing medium in large, complex, globally distributed engineering projects is widespread; yet there exists little understanding of the content of the emails exchanged and the implications of this content on the design project, design records and contracts. The importance of these issues is underlined by the fact that email records can now be required as evidence in legal disputes. It follows that the overall aim of this research is to assess the role and use of email in engineering design projects. A state-of-the-art review of literature pertaining to email is reported, along with a review of information and communication processes in engineering design projects. The primary contribution of this thesis is the creation of a content based approach for analysing the role and use of email in engineering design projects. This centres on the development and application of a coding scheme to email text, identifying what subject matter an email relates to, why it was sent, and how its content is expressed. Results are then analysed with respect to the frequencies of each code and other variables, including how coding varies between different senders and throughout the project duration. The second key contribution of this thesis is the analysis of emails and content in an engineering setting by applying the aforementioned approach to two case studies. The major case study concerned a large, complex, globally distributed, multimillion pound systems engineering project, from which 16 000 emails were obtained. It was found that emails are mainly used to transfer information but also to support management functions. Emails facilitate design work but little of this takes place explicitly in the email content. Characteristics of a project affect the subject matter or emails but have little effect on why they are sent. User roles and personal preferences also influence email use. If was found that the purposes for sending emails varied over the duration of a project; it was further determined that these changes could be used to identify project progress and design activity. Implications of the findings are identified in relation to: information management, knowledge management, project management, collaboration and email practice. Significantly, emails do contain potentially important design information and because these often support decisions made elsewhere, emails should be integrated with wider records. More consideration and training should be given to the use of project standards for email use and guidelines for composition. Changes in email use over the project duration could be a potential tool for project managers to identify design progress and possible issues in a project.

This study aims to investigate the outsourced design management implementations along the alliances that are established between firms and design consultancies in Turkey, which have been analysed in a limited sense in the past. Within this context / information on, &lsquo / why and how design is outsourced&rsquo / and &lsquo / how the design process is managed&rsquo / are derived through semi-structured interviews in conjunction with structured questionnaire conducted with managers from a sample selection of design and manufacturing firms with the aim of comparing the expectations and offerings of the parties that engaged the alliances in Turkey. The findings of the field study indicate that design management implementations in their current form of application exhibit several issues to discuss. Context of outsourced design service, corporate level strategic utilization of the design expertise, evaluation of final outputs, business initiation practices and design process management practices are important factors to consider in management of design alliances.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Carnegie Mellon University, 2006. / (UMI)AAI3236591. Adviser: Richard Buchanan. Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-10, Section: A, page: 3632.

O gerenciamento de projetos tem sido utilizado pelas organizações como ferramenta para estruturar, organizar e aprimorar suas práticas, bem como para alinhar projetos aos seus objetivos estratégicos. Por sua vez, gerir projetos de design significa planejar a gestão do desenvolvimento de novos produtos e deve envolver conhecimentos sobre gestão, assim como das atividades do design. Com foco no setor industrial, o presente estudo tem como objetivo analisar a gestão de projetos de design na indústria moveleira no Vale do Taquari, segmento produtivo que tem relevante destaque na indústria de transformação nacional. O estudo baseia-se na proposição de Borja de Mozota, que considera que a gestão do design está inserida nos três níveis organizacionais: operacional, tático e estratégico. Utiliza, também, modelos de maturidade em gestão de projetos como evidência para análise adicional da pesquisa, uma vez que pretende verificar como as empresas estudadas lidam com a gestão de projetos. Para o desenvolvimento deste trabalho, realizou-se uma pesquisa de abordagem qualitativa, caracterizada como um estudo de casos, cuja coleta de dados ocorreu em visitas e entrevistas com gestores de duas indústrias de móveis. A relação da gestão de projetos de design e a análise do nível de maturidade em gestão de projetos possibilitaram a identificação de pontos fortes e oportunidades de melhoria das empresas estudadas. Infere-se, nesse sentido, que empresas que conhecem, planejam, gerenciam e controlam seus processos e o desenvolvimento de seus produtos estão, em geral, mais preparadas para a competitividade e a inovação. O resultado deste estudo mostrou que, mesmo sem uma sistematização e conhecimento dos conceitos, as empresas pesquisadas tratam da questão da gestão de projetos de design nos seus níveis organizacionais. / Project management has been used by organizations as a tool to structure, organize and improve their practices as well as projects to align their strategic objectives. In turn, managing design projects, means planning the management of new product development and management should involve knowledge of how the activities of design. Focusing on the industrial sector, this study aims to examine the management of design projects in the furniture industry in Vale do Taquari, a productive segment that has significant prominence in the national process industry. The study was based on the proposition of Borja de Mozota, whereby the design management is inserted in the three organizational levels: operational, tactical and strategic. It is intended to apply also maturity models of project management as further evidence of the research. To develop this work, a research of qualitative study, characterized as a study of cases, whose data was collected in personal interviews with managers from two furniture manufacturers. The relation of project management design and analysis of the level of maturity in project management has enabled the identification of substantial points and improvement opportunities within the companies studied. It is inferred, in this sense, that companies that know, plan, manage and control their processes and the development of their products are, generally more prepared for competition and innovation. The result of this study has showed that, even without a systematization and knowledge of the concepts, the researched companies deal with the issue of management of design projects in their organizational levels.

Este trabalho busca entender como o usuário final foi abordado durante o processo de desenvolvimento de produto (PDP) em uma empresa de carrocerias de ônibus, para tanto foi realizada uma análise deste processo. Tanto na teoria do Design como na da Administração estudada, o usuário deve ser um dos fatores principais na concepção do produto e da oportunidade de mercado, dado que, geralmente, as empresas de carrocerias de ônibus não abordavam diretamente as necessidades do usuário em seus PDP, conforme mostra a bibliografia. O estudo de caso foi realizado sobre o projeto de um ônibus rodoviário e no PDP identificado, no qual o usuário final teve suas necessidades identificadas por pesquisa de mercado realizada pela própria empresa. Como resultado houve uma nova configuração do espaço interior do veículo, demonstrando que o projeto anterior, que não possuía atributos desenvolvidos com foco nas necessidades, estava provavelmente em dissonância com o usuário final. O estudo também demonstra que a estrutura e a política interna da empresa têm influência no resultado do projeto de design. / This dissertation analyzes the product development process (PDP) of a coach bodybuilder to understand how the End User has been addressed during this process, given the fact that the design and administration studied theories addresses that the User must be a major factor to assign the product and market opportunity. However, the literature review also indicated that, usually, companies such as Brazilian coach bodybuilder did not address directly the user’s needs. The case study was conducted on the design of a touring coach and the PDP identified End User needs by means of a market research conducted by the company. As a result there was a new configuration of the interior space, showing that the previous model, which did not possess attributes focused on the user’s needs, was probably at odds with the End User. The study also shows that the corporate structure and internal politics influence the outcome of the project design.