Concurrent Engineering Research Articles

Call for papers: Advanced technologies in concurrent engineering

Call for papers: Advanced technologies in concurrent engineering

Call for papers: Industry 4.0 and concurrent engineering: Synergies and transformations

Call for papers: Industry 4.0 and concurrent engineering: Synergies and transformations

Lean Manufacturing Practices in Tanzania: Exploring Awareness, Training and Capital Investment

With the growing competition among industries in the world, manufacturing industries are now forced to adopt the Lean Manufacturing philosophy to improve their competitive abilities. The adoption of the philosophy is very low in developing countries such as Tanzania, as is demonstrated with 1% of publications and the lack of knowledge and capital for Lean Manufacturing implementation causes this. Furthermore, the contribution of the sector to the Gross Domestic Product in Tanzania is low and stands at 8.4%. The study wants to bridge the gap in training, capital and awareness of Lean Manufacturing in Tanzania. Survey and purposive sampling techniques were adopted in the study. A structured questionnaire was used to collect responses from 243 manufacturing industries of all sizes. Descriptive and inferential statistics were analysed with SPSS version 27.0.1. The results demonstrated that there is inadequate training for micro and small industries as more than 80% have not received any training, have inadequate funds whereby more than 95% have not allocated funds and low awareness with a mean score of below 3 out of 5. The status is contrary in medium and large industries, with more than 75% training provision. It was also revealed that 90% of large industries have allocated funds while for medium ones it is more than 39% and the awareness for Lean Manufacturing is high as they have a mean score of above 3. The Lean practices with high levels of awareness to all manufacturing industries are 5s, concurrent engineering and visual management. The low level of awareness, training and insufficient capital for Lean Manufacturing affect the adoptions of the philosophy in Tanzania. Therefore, the study will assist practitioners and policymakers in setting strategies for bridging the gap in the adoption of Lean Manufacturing in developing countries such as Tanzania.

Open-Source Data Formalization through Model-Based Systems Engineering for Concurrent Preliminary Design of CubeSats

Market trends in the space sector suggest a notable increase in satellite operations and market value for the coming decade. In parallel, there has been a shift in the industrial and academic sectors from traditional Document-Based System Engineering to Model-based systems engineering (MBSE) combined with Concurrent engineering (CE) practices. Due to growing demands, the drivers behind this change have been the need for quicker and more cost-effective design processes. A key challenge in this transition remains to determine how to effectively formalize and exchange data during all design stages and across all discipline-specific tools; as representing systems through models can be a complex endeavor. For instance, during the Preliminary design (PD) phase, the integration of system models with external mathematical models for simulations, analyses, and system budgeting is crucial. The introduction of CubeSats and their standard has partly addressed the question of standardization and has aided in reducing overall development time and costs in the space sector. Nevertheless, questions about how to successfully exchange data endure. This paper focuses on formalizing a CubeSat model for use across various stages of the PD phase. The entire process is conducted with the exclusive use of open-source tools, to facilitate the transparency of data integration across the PD phases, and the overall life cycle of a CubeSat. The paper has two primary outcomes: (i) developing a generic CubeSat model using Systems modeling language (SysML) that includes data storage and visualization through the application of Unified modeling language (UML) stereotypes, streamlining in parallel information exchange for integration with various simulation and analysis tools; (ii) creating an end-to-end use case scenario within the Nanostar software suite (NSS), an open-source framework designed to streamline data exchange across different software during CE sessions. A case study from a theoretical academic space mission concept is presented as the illustration of how to utilize the proposed formalization, and it serves as well as a preliminary validation of the proposed formalization. The proposed formalization positions the CubeSat SysML model as the central data source throughout the design process. It also supports automated trade-off analyses by combining the benefits of SysML with effective data instantiating across all PD study phases.

Making of an Indigenous and Efficient Powertrains for EV, HEV & FCEV’s

Rise in greenhouse gas emissions which is resulting into ozone layer depletion and global warming effect is alarming to control CO2 emissions by drastically reducing fossil fuel consumption from the vehicles. This need has already started trend towards extreme downsizing and down speeding of Internal Combustion Engines (ICE) for making them highly efficient. In addition to this use of after treatment devices viz. Diesel Oxidation Catalyst (DOC), Diesel Particulate Filter (DPF), Lean NOx Catalyst (LNT), Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) are helping to a great extent for meeting emission norms till Euro - VI for automotive sector, Tier–IV F and Stage V for Off Highway Power sector. However, to address present greenhouse effect along with exponential decay of fossil fuels, there is need to achieve CO2 emissions less than 100 g/km or to achieve practically zero carbon footprint using an alternate powertrain. Electrification is one of the promising solutions and which is three-fold in present situation. The first level of electrification comes in the form of Hybrid Electric Vehicle (HEV) technology followed by Battery Electric Vehicles and Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles as second and third level of electrification respectively. In all these technologies a common thread is running in the form of an efficient electric drive train. Several efforts have been taken to improve torque per unit ampere by use of efficient motor and motor control algorithms viz PMSM powered with FOC, by developing controls which take care of parametric variations and external force disturbances by use of back stepping techniques which are based on rotor resistance estimation by fuzzy logic, FOC techniques based on adaptive input-output feedback linearization, by shifting towards high voltage systems, by going for higher switching frequencies for inverters which uses silicon carbide based MOSFET switches, by exploring use of multilevel inverters for Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) control etc. Use of E Axle based powertrains in EV, HEV and FCEV offers additional complimentary benefits apart from technology options described above. E Axle based powertrains offers flexibility in generating three variants of vehicle using one electric drive train architecture viz. making EV, HEV & FCEV. Compactness, modularity, scalability, flexibility along with efficient cooling system management and control over active current losses due to use of bus bars are the implicit advantages of E Axle based powertrains. These advantages further get multiplies if we go for 3 in 1 (gearbox + Stator housing + Inverter) architectures which are predominantly used in independent suspension-based vehicles. Lot of efforts are going on to inherit this technology for rigid axle suspension based commercial vehicles. Research in this area is getting further extended to make 5 in 1 E Axles where there will addition of DC - DC converter and On-Board Charger (OBC) apart from components present in 3 in 1 configuration. Two major challenges need to be addressed and to be resolved while designing E Axle based powertrains by doing concurrent vehicle engineering. This is mainly due to increased unsprang weight that need to be handled by suspension system and exposed electric drive components to excitation loads coming from roads. Fig: Indigenously Developed E Axle Based Powertrain for Small Commercial VehiclesBy proper lay outing for effective vehicle mass distribution and required CG location which is essential from overall vehicle dynamics, more space can be offered by E Axle based powertrains for increasing battery energy density for getting more electric range in case of BEV’s. This add on space benefit extend help in packaging of hydrogen fuel cell integrated with power cells in case of FCEV’s. Thus, E Axle based powertrains proves to be modern and most efficient way of making EV, HEV & FCEV’s.

Managing Design Changes through Integrating Concurrent Engineering into the Architectural Design Process

Managing Design Changes through Integrating Concurrent Engineering into the Architectural Design Process

Advanced Concurrent Engineering using CAD software-Classic, Avant-garde and AI

Advanced Concurrent Engineering using CAD software-Classic, Avant-garde and AI

Concurrent Engineering and Quality Management Integration Methodology for Product Development

Concurrent Engineering and Quality Management Integration Methodology for Product Development

How Resilient are Lucid Motivators? Endeavoring Reforms for Effects of Psycho-social Factors on Workers Health Through Concurrent Engineering

BackgroundAs the tremendous impact of extreme workloads, arduous working conditions, and disorganization disrupt humane job definitions in some industries, the need for workplace re-articulation was interfered to ameliorate psycho-social factors and suggest organizational intervention strategies. Especially for colossally wounded health-care (HC) systems, today it is now even more unrealizable to retain workforce resilience considering the immense impact of overwhelming working conditions. MethodsThis study introduces employment of concurrent engineering tools to re-design humane workplaces annihilating abatement over devoured resources. The study handles HC-workforce resilience in a pioneering motive to introduce transformation of well-known motivators and proposes solutions for retention and resilience issues grounding on HC workers’ own voice. ResultsThe proposed adjustable approach introduces integral use of focus group studies, SWARA, and QFD methods, and was practiced on a real-world case regarding Turkish HC workforce. The paper also presents widespread effects of findings by tendering generalized psycho-social rehabilitation strategies. Results confirmed the modifications of the most potent incessant motivators. Conclusion“Burn out issues” and “Challenging work” were found as the most important motivator and satisfier, respectively, to be exigently fulfilled. Corrective interventions, required resolutions, and workplace articulation connotations were arbitrated in terms of entire outcomes on four dimensions in three different planning periods considering the current status, repercussions of pandemic, and contingency of similar catastrophes. Descriptive illustrations were additionally presented to support deducted interpretations.

Understanding collaboration in sub-structured teams through a computational model of set-based concurrent engineering

Coordinating the collaboration within sub-structured teams created for large engineering projects presents several challenges. Set-based concurrent engineering (SBCE), by maintaining several candidate designs for each subproblem throughout the process, may alter the best ways to coordinate subteams in these projects, compared to point-based concurrent engineering (PBCE) processes in which only one candidate design is maintained for each subproblem. Previous studies have introduced SBCE to industry with positive results and have corroborated its stated benefits through computational study, but researchers have yet to systematically study how SBCE interacts with sub-structured teams. This work augments a multi-agent model developed to simulate and study SBCE, the Point/Set-Organized Research Teams (PSORT) platform, to model sub-structured teams with different forms of intra-subteam collaboration, including joint iteration, design sharing, or no collaboration at all. Design projects are then simulated using these collaboration methods with PBCE and SBCE conditions to investigate how SBCE affects team performance under different modes of intra-subteam collaboration. These studies find that SBCE enables nominal subteams to combine the efforts of multiple designers on individual subproblems with minimal losses, while high levels of collaboration during development are found to assist designers in overcoming design barriers, which SBCE facilitates by maintaining many design options.

Surveying Quality Management Methodologies in Wooden Furniture Production

Furniture production is a specific industrial sector with a high human labor demand, a wide range of materials processed, and short production runs caused by high customization of end products. The difficulty of measuring the aesthetic requirements of customers is also specific to furniture. This review of academic papers identifies and explains effective quality management strategies in furniture production. The reviewed literature highlights a range of quality management methodologies, including concurrent engineering (CE), total quality management (TQM), lean manufacturing, lean six sigma, and kaizen. These strategies encompass a variety of pro-quality tools, such as 5S, statistical process control (SPC), quality function deployment (QFD), and failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA). The strengths of these quality management strategies lie in their ability to enhance efficiency, reduce waste, increase product diversity, and improve product quality. However, the weaknesses concern implementation challenges and the need for culture change within organizations. Successful quality management in furniture production requires tailoring strategies to the specific context of the furniture production industry. Additionally, the importance of sustainability in the furniture industry is emphasized, which entails incorporating circular economy principles and resource-efficient practices. The most important finding from the literature analysis is that early detection and correction of poor quality yields the most beneficial outcomes for the manufacturer. Therefore, it is essential to strengthen the rigor of quality testing and analysis during the early stages of product development. Consequently, a deep understanding of consumer perspectives on required furniture quality is crucial. The review identified two research gaps: (1) the impact of unnecessary product over-quality on the efficiency of furniture production and (2) the influence of replacing CAD drawings with a model-based definition (MBD) format on quality management in furniture production.

Phase Engineering of MXene Derivatives Via Molecular Design for High‐Rate Sodium‐Ion Batteries

Since 2019, research into MXene derivatives has seen a dramatic rise; further progress requires a rational design for specific functionality. Herein, through a molecular design by selecting suitable functional groups in the MXene coating, we have implemented the dual N doping of the derivatives, nitrogen‐doped TiO2@nitrogen‐doped carbon nanosheets (N‐TiO2@NC), to strike a balance between the active anatase TiO2 at low temperatures, and carbon activation at high temperatures. The NH3 reduction environment generated at 400 °C as evidenced by the in situ pyrolysis SVUV‐PIMS process is crucial for concurrent phase engineering. With both electrical conductivity and surface Na+ availability, the N‐TiO2@NC achieves higher interface capacitive‐like sodium storage with long‐term stability. More than 100 mAh g−1 is achieved at 2 A g−1 after 5000 cycles. The proposed design may be extended to other MXenes and solidify the growing family of MXene derivatives for energy storage.

Early concurrent engineering in the aerospace industry supported by a Digital Thread framework

The traditional sequential aircraft design process is reaching its limits in an increasingly complex environment. Therefore, it has become an industrial necessity to implement radical change in working methods. This paper focuses on the conceptual design phase, where concurrent engineering offers the greatest potential to improve the costs, quality, and development time of a new aircraft. It pays particular attention to the knowledge management and modeling activities used to provide global perspectives that are inherently lacking in early phases. A digital thread framework is presented linking model-based systems engineering artifacts from product and manufacturing systems, coupled with knowledge capture methods. This framework aims to enable early trade-of analysis to support concurrent engineering during the conceptual design phase.

From manufacturing tolerancing to adaptive manufacturing targets

The functional tolerancing process involves the allocation of the tolerance derived from each functional requirement, expressed at the assembly level, into multiple functional tolerances at the part level. For each part, the manufacturing tolerancing process transfers each functional tolerance into multiple manufacturing tolerances on the dimensions produced throughout the entire process. However, this transfer faces challenges when dealing with tight functional tolerances and constrained process capability.This article proposes an innovative method for adaptively optimizing the production process to enhance its capabilities. Rather than relying on a static manufacturing transfer, this approach involves intermediate measurements of each workpiece during production, modelling its digital shadow. By dynamically adjusting the targets of the upcoming manufacturing dimensions, individual adjustments aim to maximize the likelihood of conformity. This adaptive strategy allows for the allocation of tighter functional tolerances while ensuring workpiece conformity and maintaining the same manufacturing process. Concurrent engineering is thereby facilitated.

Driving Sustainable Innovation: Exploring Lean, Green, Circular, and Smart Design

Driven by a technological transition, paradigms such as Lean, Green, and Circular Economy are increasingly being addressed by manufacturers to provide increasingly complex solutions. Whether considering products or services, design plays a decisive role in this context. Concurrent engineering and approaches to Design for X (DFX) have become commonly related to products and services, revealing the prominent potential to enhance product quality, improve sustainability performance, increase consumer satisfaction, and support the design of products, processes, and systems. However, many researchers have developed several DFX techniques with modified applications for different domains. This diversity makes it hard for practitioners and researchers when considering advanced technologies, to suit the current DFX with an integrated lean, green, and circular design perspective. In this regard, this paper aims to present a literature analysis concerning a potential model for the integration of four paradigms of management: lean, green, circular economy, and Industry 4.0 while considering DFX approaches. As a result, a framework that illustrates the connection between the fourth paradigm considered and the DFX approaches is presented. Our analysis would be useful to academics and practitioners since it indicates the field's key limitations and research lines.

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.

Perceptions of Construction Risks Due to Fast-Track Activity Overlapping

Concurrent engineering through overlapping of activities (i.e., fast-tracking) has been used as a schedule acceleration technique. Fast-track construction projects are generally recognized as riskier and subject to risks arising due to the concurrency of work. This work reports the risk perception of construction professionals to three different degrees of overlapping. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect the data, and the analysis applied data transformation and descriptive statistics. The risks were mainly perceived in the middle degree of overlapping and in activities occurring earlier in the schedule. The low and high degrees of overlapping were mainly perceived as having no risk or not being feasible, respectively. The four risk types accounted for most of the perceived threats: construction error, design change, crew interference, and poor construction productivity. The findings of this study suggest that construction professionals perceive risks differently based on the amount of activity overlapping. It is consistent with previous studies that found that risks decrease as the project advances and that fast-track projects face additional risks.

A Value-driven Concurrent Approach for Aircraft Design-Manufacturing-Supply Chain

ABSTRACT The research activity proposed in this paper is framed within the context of the concurrent engineering applied to the complex aeronautical system development. The main objective is to extend the aircraft design parameters with those of manufacturing and supply chain including, among others, logistics aspects, quality management, risk production, resources and materials availability. This surely complicates the design problem due to an enlargement of the alternatives populating the solutions tradespace. However, it provides a great opportunity to gain agility, variety and competitive advantages in the nowadays global market. The formulation and implementation of the new value-driven methodology, here-proposed, offers advantageous benefits to the decision-maker, as also highlighted by the aeronautical application case addressed in this paper.

Open-source MBSE workflow for automated spacecraft thermal analyses from a system model IAC-22,D1,4B,2,x70017

Model-based systems engineering (MBSE) is an emerging methodology not only in the field of spacecraft systems engineering. The key objective is to store the whole system design in one single source of truth system model. The continuously maintained and customizable open-source MBSE tool Virtual Satellite developed by German Aerospace Center (DLR) offers a framework for storing such a system model. Since the open-source 3D computer aided design (CAD) software FreeCAD has a dedicated Virtual Satellite workbench for importing the 3D model file generated by Virtual Satellite, it is possible to export the 3D model from Virtual Satellite, apply changes to it in FreeCAD, and afterwards reimport it in Virtual Satellite. This paper presents a workflow implementation to conduct automated steady-state and transient thermal analyses using the Virtual Satellite system model as a basis, utilizing the aforementioned features. Part of this effort was to extend Virtual Satellite by thermal modeling capabilities, such as material parameters, surface characteristics, thermal interfaces, boundary conditions and further relevant aspects. With custom Java applications, so-called “Apps”, all aspects of the system model relevant for a thermal analysis are exported from Virtual Satellite and written to accordingly generated text files. Moreover, the before described 3D model export is used to export the model to FreeCAD. The FreeCAD Python console, in combination with the finite element method (FEM) workbench, is used to create a script that executes meshing, application of the boundary and initial conditions, as well as identification of contacts between parts and application of the specified contact conductance values. The obtained files form a complete thermal model and can be fed directly into the open-source FEM software CalculiX for executing the thermal analysis. Then, the result can be processed by an additional Virtual Satellite App. To account for the space thermal environment an additional feature was added to the FreeCAD script. The feature uses orbit information obtained from external mission analysis tools to calculate the approximate combined heat load from Sun, Earth infrared, and albedo radiation at each time point in the specified simulation time interval. This new workflow allows to execute quick thermal analyses at an early design stage and therefore opens new opportunities in the evaluation of different system designs, as early as in a concurrent engineering study. Configuration parameters are provided that also allow more sophisticated analyses in later development phases, such as custom mesh definition and local mesh refinement.

Delimiting design: expanding the limits of concurrency through set-based concurrent engineering

Engineering design problems are often decomposed and distributed among design teams so that their components may be developed concurrently in a project. Set-based concurrent engineering (SBCE) details a development process that reduces the need for communication and rework, often considered limiting factors to concurrency, by maintaining many candidate designs for each subproblem throughout the design process. This ensures that candidates have some compatible options to combine with as the project progresses rather than needing constant coordination and adaptation. Previous studies of SBCE found positive results in industry and corroborated its claimed benefits with computational models but have yet to study how it interacts with problem decomposition. This work uses the Point/Set-Organised Research Teams (PSORT) platform, a computational model developed to simulate and study SBCE, to investigate how SBCE interacts with a problem decomposed to different degrees to understand its impact on the limits of concurrency. Problem decompositions are also formulated with varying amounts of coupling to further test the interactions of SBCE and concurrency in different situations. Simulations with PSORT find that SBCE becomes more beneficial as problem decomposition increases, suggesting that SBCE expands the limits of concurrency; however small teams may prefer not to use SBCE.