Concurrent Engineering Design Research Articles

Exploring the impact of design tool usage on design for additive manufacturing processes and outcomes

Abstract Improving designers’ ability to identify manufacturing constraints during design can help reduce the time and cost involved in the development of new products. Different design for additive manufacturing (DfAM) tools exist, but the design outcomes produced using such tools are often evaluated without comparison to existing tools. This study addresses the research gap by directly comparing design performance using two design support tools: a worksheet listing DfAM principles and a manufacturability analysis software tool that analyzes compliance with the same principles. In a randomized-controlled study, 49 nonexpert designers completed a design task to improve the manufacturability of a 3D-printed part using either the software tool or the worksheet tool. In this study, design outcome data (creativity and manufacturability) and design process data (task load and time taken) were measured. We identified statistically significant differences in the number of manufacturability violations in the software and worksheet groups and the creativity of the designs with novel build orientations. Results demonstrated limitations associated with lists of principles and highlighted the potential of software in promoting creativity by encouraging the exploration of alternative build orientations. This study provides support for using software to help designers, particularly nonexpert designers who rely on trial and error during design, evaluate the manufacturability of their designs more effectively, thereby promoting concurrent engineering design practices.

Realisation of Design Methodologies and Tools in Modern Manufacturing Systems

Engineering design is the basis for technological advancement and the development of new products. Many changes have emerged over the last few decades due to scientific advancements, evolution in novel engineering materials, advances in computational technology, the opening up of the global village, economic constraints, short life spans of products, and the need for a responsive life cycle design paradigm in engineering products. To meet customer or operational requirements, a certain design methodology is used to design and develop products. This has resulted in notable growth in product design methodologies across disciplines, particularly architecture, engineering, and industrial designs. The engineering design methodology has addressed design procedures, epistemological issues, and working procedures in the design disciplines for several decades. In this article, the research seeks to delve into novel design methodologies currently in use and interrogate their limitations and advantages to create synergies among the best practices in engineering design approaches, with particular emphasis on responsiveness to continuously changing customer requirements. To achieve this, special emphasis will be placed on a design methodology for life cycle, end-of-life, concurrent engineering, eco-design, and reconfigurable design. Based on a strategic focus, the drive is for innovative engineering design that requires design approaches that respond to continuous product changes. The results from this study demonstrate the relationships between engineering design methodologies and solution models that respond to industry and customer requirements.

Product Development of Natural Fibre-Composites for Various Applications: Design for Sustainability.

New product development review article aims to consolidate the principles and current literature on design for sustainability to seek the field’s future direction. In this point of view, the design for sustainability methods can be established under the idea of sustainability in dimensions of ecology, economy and social pillars. Design for sustainability concept is implemented in concurrent engineering, including concept, embodiment and detail design processes. Integrating sustainability in engineering designs is crucial to producing greener products, system innovation, and services aligned with current market demand. Currently, many concurrent engineering studies related to natural fibre-reinforced polymer composites associated with sustainability enhance the application of design for sustainability techniques by professional designers. However, the current literature is scarce in bridging the design for sustainability concept with concurrent engineering during the design development stage, and these areas should be further developed. Several other future research directions, such as the need for aligning with principles and applications, along with exploring the relationships between the design for sustainability techniques and views of sustainability, are presented in this review paper.

Identification and Evaluation of the Influencing Factors in Target Value Design Process through an Industry Survey

Target value design is a new practice in the construction industry promoting concurrent engineering and collaborative design. This paper shows the results of literature survey to identify the influencing factors in the target value design. The paper also presents the results of a questionnaire survey to explore the industry practitioners' perception of the relative importance of the influencing factors. Project stakeholders participating in the survey consider the integration of different project stakeholders in the design phase as critical. The project definition is also regarded as essential in implementing the target value design. However, the market conditions and project attributes are considered as least significant in the target value design process.

Research of the Green Product Design and Evaluation Methods based on Concurrent Engineering

Based on the concept of concurrent engineering and green design, the framework of green concurrent engineering structure was discussed. Then the key technologies and key factors were analyzed, and the evaluation indicators and design methods of green design are studied. So product development could be controlled from the whole process in order to improve the development efficiency and product quality, and reduce the pollution to protect the environment.

Dynamic manufacturing network – from flat semantic graphs to composite models

During last years, the federated interoperability framework (FIF) has been developed by Airbus Group Innovation (AGI) for establishing sustainable Product and Process data interoperability. FIF combines usage of open standards for Manufacturing, Information Systems (IS) and Information & Communication Technologies (ICT). FIF evolvability was demonstrated by addressing successively Concurrent Engineering and Collaborative Product design in Virtual Enterprises. Due to the considered complex systems, FIF uses Enterprise Modelling (EM) and Model Driven Approach (MDAp) for preparing and building operational interoperability. Interconnected enterprise platforms behaviour and data flows are derived from business logic models. When exchanging data, FIF prevents data loss and semantic inconsistency relying on ontology: a semantic hyper-graph is produced per collaboration. Equivalent constructs of all the languages used in the MDAp are mapped for conceptualisation, design, development and realisation. But it requires more when addressing the complexity of the considered systems. Using semantic graphs and descriptive logic is not suited when dealing with multi-scale models and the various breakdowns with different granularity. This paper describes an innovative approach for extending the FIF, relying on modelling over UML2/SysML and introduces mereotopology. Usage is illustrated with a comprehensive use case combining Manufacturing 4.0 and PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) of the future.

Engineering Design Featuring the Life Cycle Approach for Reconfigurable Machine Tool

The evolution of design has come of age and the new design approaches that look at the rapid change and short life cycles of products is taking the centre stage. Competitiveness and the cost of products determine the lifeline of an organisation. The traditional machine tools such as the dedicated and flexible machines are designed on the principle of machine design. The development of reconfigurable machines seeks a new approach to design that not only encompasses the existing approaches but should include new design approaches as well. The success of a designed product maybe measured by the capability of the system that produces it. It is critical when designing a product that the organisation’s technological and manufacturing system capabilities be considered as failure to do so may lead to production designs that are not manufacturable. A good design system ensures quick delivery of a quality, reliable and safe product. This research therefore seeks to develop an integrated approach to design that incorporates design for manufacturing, design for assembly, concurrent engineering, eco-design and reconfigurable design as critical components for reconfigurable machine tool. Literature on these systems was reviewed to integrate the different design paradigms. The results of the study give a new approach to a reconfigurable machine design based on the integration of the five design approaches and their impact in the life cycle of a product.

Management of the design process: Human resource evaluation in factories of the future

The concurrent engineering design depends on the efficiency of communication between the actors in the design process, such as how effective communication between engineers and teams will have a direct effect on the design efficiency. Currently, the relationships among different actors in the project are shaped by many new challenges such as multiplication of data and information, mass customization, global collaboration, ageing societies, increasing urbanization, scarcity of resources, dynamic technology and innovation. When managers consider these factors, human resource evaluation becomes much more complex to grasp. In order to cope with adaption of product–process–organization model for industry of the future, it is necessary to have a methodology to approach the problem of human resource evaluation in the future organization structure.

Application of Cost Reduction Tools in Manufacturing Organizations at Pokhara

Today’s business organization’s success highly depends upon the satisfaction of customer needs and wants since it become the age of globalization. All the manufacturing organizations of Pokhara valley are needed to mass customize their product as the requirement of the customer and satisfy to their needs and wants. For this purpose, organizations have to use the modern technology. This study aims to evaluate the application of cost reduction tools in Nepalese manufacturing organizations with reference to Pokhara valley. Out of total manufacturing firm, only 10 organizations have been selected at least two samples from each stratum out of the target population. Primary data have been collected through the structured questionnaires by distributing it to the production manager or finance manager of the concerned organization. The information has been collected through unit visits. An empirical investigation has been conducted in order to find out various aspects of cost reduction tools. The major tool used for this purpose is the questionnaire. Nepalese manufacturing organizations are selecting the purchase of raw material, production planning and control as the area of reducing their cost. All of the organizations are conscious about TQM as the technique of cost reduction. Most of the organizations are applying product line rationalization, supply chain management, KAIZEN system, reengineering as the technique of cost reduction. Most of the organizations are not applying the Design for manufacturability and concurrent engineering, on demand lean production, build to order, part standardization, Just in Time production system as the tools of cost reduction. Janapriya Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, Vol. 6 (December 2017), page: 45-59

Greenhouse Module for Space System: A Lunar Greenhouse Design

Abstract In the next 10 to 20 years humankind will return to the Moon and/or travel to Mars. It is likely that astronauts will eventually build permanent settlements there, as a base for long-term crew tended research tasks. It is obvious that the crew of such settlements will need food to survive. With current mission architectures the provision of food for longduration missions away from Earth requires a significant number of resupply flights. Furthermore, it would be infeasible to provide the crew with continuous access to fresh produce, specifically crops with high water content such as tomatoes and peppers, on account of their limited shelf life. A greenhouse as an integrated part of a planetary surface base would be one solution to solve this challenge for long-duration missions. Astronauts could grow their own fresh fruit and vegetables in-situ to be more independent from supply from Earth. This paper presents the results of the design project for such a greenhouse, which was carried out by DLR and its partners within the framework of the Micro-Ecological Life Support System Alternative (MELiSSA) program. The consortium performed an extensive system analysis followed by a definition of system and subsystem requirements for greenhouse modules. Over 270 requirements were defined in this process. Afterwards the consortium performed an in-depth analysis of illumination strategies, potential growth accommodations and shapes for the external structure. Five different options for the outer shape were investigated, each of them with a set of possible internal configurations. Using the Analytical Hierarchy Process, the different concept options were evaluated and ranked against each other. The design option with the highest ranking was an inflatable outer structure with a rigid inner core, in which the subsystems are mounted. The inflatable shell is wrapped around the core during launch and transit to the lunar surface. The paper provides an overview of the final design, which was further detailed in a concurrent engineering design study. During the study, the subsystem parameters (e.g. mass, power, performance) were calculated and evaluated. The results of the study were further elaborated, leading to a lunar greenhouse concept that fulfils all initial requirements. The greenhouse module has a total cultivation area of more than 650 m² and provides more than 4100 kg of edible dry mass over the duration of the mission. Based on the study, the consortium also identified technology and knowledge gaps (not part of this paper), which have to be addressed in future projects to make the actual development of such a lunar greenhouse, and permanent settlements for long-term human-tended research tasks on other terrestrial bodies, feasible in the first place.

Lessons learnt in the development of a Concurrent Engineering Infrastructure

AbstractWe have recently completed the development of the Concurrent Engineering Design Laboratory at Skoltech, one of the first facilities of its kind in the Russian Federation. Concurrent engineering facilities are not built every day; sharing this experience is thus of high value for organizations seeking to develop a new facility from scratch. With our project, we acquired experience in developing concurrent engineering infrastructure, and learnt lessons along the way on how these facilities need to be architected, designed, and implemented, in order to effectively meet the needs and goals of the stakeholders, customers, and operators. The paper intends to describe this experience and formulates lessons learnt on what worked well and what could have worked better in our development project. This paper provides a useful contribution to this purpose, so that systems engineers may build upon our experience and build improved and more effective concurrent engineering laboratories.

The Application of Concurrent Engineering Tools and Design Structure Matrix in Designing Tire

The development of automobile industry in Indonesia is growing rapidly. This phenomenon causes companies related to the automobile industry such as tire industry must develop products based on customers’ needs and considering the timeliness of delivering the product to the customer. It could be reached by applying strategic planning in developing an integrated concept of product development. This research was held in PT. XYZ that applied the sequential approach in designing and developing products. The need to improve in one stage of product development could occur re-designing that needs longer time in developing a new product. This research is intended to get an integrated product design concept of tire pertaining to the customer's needs using Concurrent Engineering Tools by implementing the two-phased of product development. The implementation of Concurrent Engineering approach results in applying the stage of project planning, conceptual design, and product modules. The product modules consist of four modules that using Product Architecture - Design Structure Matrix to ease the designing process of new product development.

Domain knowledge versioning and aggregation mechanisms in product design processes

In the context of concurrent engineering and routine design, this study consists in the first step of structuring knowledge models. In the second step, it deals with the development of a method that puts in emergence the collaboration of actors involved in a design process. This aims to dynamically build a project library that traces the history of engineering process and capitalizes knowledge related to the product. The crucial part of this article studies domain knowledge versioning and aggregation mechanisms after modifications made by actors during the design process. We propose, to mitigate these problems, a mechanism that allows expressing and managing knowledge version’s evolution strategies. The validation of the suggested approach was through its application on the design of car air-conditioners and the development of a prototype of knowledge processing tool named ‘DISKOVER’.

Parallel Green Design of Machine Product

Concurrent green design of machine product proposed concurrent engineering method in the process of product design, reflect the green design idea, realize concurrent engineering and green design information sharing, so as to shorten developing period, reduce cost, enhance quality and protect environment. Connotation, basic characteristic and key technology about concurrent green design are discussed in the paper.

Green Design for Concurrent Engineering in Agriculture Machinery

According to the problems existing in the serial mode design method ,green design for concurrent engineering is introduced in developing agriculture machinery product to shorten the product developing period ,reduce cost ,reduce pollution ,improve quality preserve environment ,and improve the green degree of agriculture machinery product .The main contents ,design mode and basic characteristics of green design are elaborated in this paper for concurrent engineering .At the same time ,type green design system is also introduced in the pape. Green design for concurrent engineering is a new product exploitation and designmode. As green design for concurrent engineering for agriculture machinery product is demand of the product development, it promotes sustaining progress for agriculture system.

An Interactive System for Concurrent Engineering Design

The methods in delivering engineering design have gone through evolvement where the effectiveness of conventional methods is decreasing. However, the importance of concurrent engineering design approach has tremendously increased due to the ever competitive world today. This is the reason why engineering designers are concern about the methods of delivering design and one of the recent interests is using interactive system to deliver design. In this paper, the construction of interactive system will be discussed followed by the experimental setup. Experiments will be conducted in the form of performing few selected tasks with the interactive system and comparison will be made with the conventional design approach. Comparison will be done by collecting feedback through questionnaires from the participants who are involved in the experiments. Feedback will be analysed to identify the feasibility of interactive concurrent engineering design system.

A modularized contact-rule reasoning approach to the assembly sequence generation for product design

Concurrent engineering design is widely used to shorten the time needed to introduce a new product and to enhance the quality of the design of the product. However, designers seldom consider the difficulty of assembling a product’s components and modules in the concurrent development process. In fact, the concept of design for assembly is not new. Planning the execution of assembly operations and selecting the assembly sequence during product development will provide designers with interrelated information of design and manufacture that help reduce manufacturing problems. The designer should realize that a reasonable assembly sequence for a product has a significant effect on the efficiency of the entire assembly process. This research focuses on the enhancement of the contact relation matrix approach to the generation of assembly sequences in a product design procedure. A systematic and efficient assembly sequence assistance procedure is proposed to generate feasible assembly sequences and to find an optimal sequence to assemble the product. Compared to the complexity of other methods, this research proposes a modularized contact-rule reasoning approach to generating assembly sequences. The general approach of this research is to (a) develop a modular method for assembly sequence planning, (b) use matrix operations to facilitate the generation of assembly sequences, and (c) generate the assembly sequence of the designed product by searching for subassembly extraction rules. The assembly sequences are then created in the form of a hierarchical structure. The results will assist designers to consider and reduce some manufacture problems in advance that might occur in the process of generation of the recommended design alternative.

Redesigning the design process through interactive simulation: a case study of life-cycle engineering in jet engine conceptual design

Many aerospace companies are currently making the transition to providing fully-integrated product-service offerings in which their products are designed from the outset with life-cycle considerations in mind. Based on a case study at Rolls-Royce, Civil Aerospace, this paper demonstrates how an interactive approach to process simulation can be used to support the redesign of existing design processes in order to incorporate life-cycle engineering (LCE) considerations. The case study provides insights into the problems of redesigning the conceptual stages of a complex, concurrent engineering design process and the practical value of process simulation as a tool to support the specification of process changes in the context of engineering design. The paper also illustrates how development of a simulation model can provide significant benefit to companies through the understanding of process behaviour that is gained through validating the behaviour of the model using different design and iteration scenarios.

Research on Green Shipbuilding and Concurrent Green Ship Design

Green shipbuilding is the embodiment of sustainable development strategy in the ship manufacturing industry. The combination of concurrent engineering and green design forms concurrent green ship design. The connotation of green shipbuilding is discussed firstly. Then a kind of operation mode of concurrent green ship design is presented, and the main contents of the mode are analyzed finally.

Design and improvement of product using intelligent function model based cost estimating

Design is one of the most important activities in new product development. While the concepts of design for manufacturability and concurrent engineering have made significant advances in integrating the design function with other areas in the firm, there are still major gaps in timely and accurate costing information available to designers. Inappropriate design could result in high redesign cost and delay in product realization. The generation of design and improvement is a time-consuming and mentally exhaustion process. It involves combining design features to generate as much potential design as possible. As not all features combinations are feasible, decision-makers have to narrow down the potential solutions and subsequently select appropriate design for further development. This research suggests an intelligent function model based cost estimating for design and improvement of product. It is composed of three steps aiming at the low cost design of the product. The first step is setting up the optimal cost which is the engineering target based on the function. The second step is estimating the current functional cost according to the unit through the function analysis for basic model and quantitative. The second step estimates the current functional cost according to the unit through the functional analysis of basic model and quantitative. In the third step, the design of a unit is reviewed according to the priority of the difference between the optimal cost and the functional cost. Arranging the unit design parameter, the best design option is set-up according to the level. Also, it was actually proved through the application of “ S” company.