Set-based Concurrent Engineering Research Articles

Serious Games in Manufacturing Education: Evaluation of Learners’ Engagement

Presently industries need new generation of knowledge workers who are adept with the dynamics of manufacturing systems. Consequently, application of serious games as a promising learning method has emerged in manufacturing education. Serious game is aimed at learning rather than pure entertainment. Thus, evaluating the effectiveness of a serious game in improving the learning outcome is a paramount issue. In this paper, after reviewing efforts which have been made in serious games’ evaluation, the level of learners’ engagement that played the Set Based Concurrent Engineering (SBCE) game is examined. The game is designed at Politecnico di Milano, Italy to bring a hand-on experience on lean product development for practitioners and academia. The study is based on one company case in Italy. The results show that a high level of engagement among learners is exhibited based on the evaluation framework adopted.

Optimal deployment of parallel teams in new product development

Speed in product development is the thin line that determines success or failure in many fast growing industries today. Strategies like set-based concurrent engineering and parallel team deployment have been used to accelerate new product introduction by successful companies like Toyota. In this paper, these two strategies are combined to investigate the impact of generating sets of alternatives using parallel teams on the revenue generated from new product development. The trade-off between cost and speed of development due to deployment of parallel teams in product development using the multi-armed bandit (MAB) framework are also explored. Quantitative models to determine the optimum number of product development teams at different stages of development have been constructed using the Gittins Index strategy. These models are tested using hypothetical data and the results show that the higher flexibility induced quality results in higher rewards, despite the higher cost of deploying multiple teams.

Creating options while designing prototypes: value management in the automobile industry

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to provide a general valuation model for the optimal design of the product development process, exemplified by automobile development. Underpinning this model is the identification of key business processes, which are analyzed in order to explain firm‐level efficiency advantages stemming from the design of the technical system.Design/methodology/approachBased on the case studies and literature on the role of organizational capabilities in creating value for the organization, a novel real option valuation model for set‐based concurrent engineering (SBCE) was proposed.FindingsA numerical example demonstrates that it is possible for the optimal number of design alternatives to develop in parallel. Under certain circumstances, developing multiple design alternatives in parallel is shown to generate significant value, fully accounting for the increase in costs of doing so.Practical implicationsFive principles of product development are proposed as a managerial tool. These findings are aimed at both practitioners and academics and solve fundamental questions raised concerning optimal resource allocation within the development process.Originality/valueSBCE is shown to be structurally analogue to a multivariate contingent claim, thereby assigning a value to the underlying technical and organizational capabilities.

Practical Applications of Set-Based Concurrent Engineering in Industry

Set-Based Concurrent Engineering is sometimes seen as a means to dramatic improvements in product design processes. In spite of its popularity in literature, the number of reported applications has so far been limited. This paper adds new information by describing implementations of Set-Based Concurrent Engineering in four product developing companies. The research took a case study approach, with the objective to investigate if the principles of Set-Based Concurrent Engineering can improve the efficiency and the effectiveness of the development process. The study shows that set-based projects can be driven within an existing organization, if given proper support. The participants claim that a set-based approach has a positive effects on development performance, especially on the level of innovation, product cost and performance. The improvements were achieved at the expense of slightly higher development costs and longer lead time. However, the positive effects are dominating and the companies involved intend to use Set-Based Concurrent Engineering in future projects when appropriate.

Set-based concept selection in multi-objective problems: optimality versus variability approach

This paper presents a novel approach to support the selection of conceptual solutions to multi-objective problems. The proposed method involves a comparison between concepts, based on the performances of sets of solutions that represent them. The set-based comparison of concepts is consistent with the so-called Toyota set-based concurrent engineering process. Such an approach discourages early exploitation of solutions and promotes extended exploration of the design space by means of sets of solutions. Both optimality and variability of concepts are considered, and their measures are devised to pose the selection problem as an auxiliary multi-objective problem. The auxiliary objectives are to maximise optimality and to maximise the variability. This highlights the inherent multi-objectivity of concept selection and supports decision-making under the possible contradictory nature of optimality and variability of concepts. Both academic and engineering problems are used to demonstrate the approach and to expose the inherent subjectivity of the measures, which are dependent on the selection of a window of interest by the decision-makers.

A new 3D-CAD system for set-based parametric design

So far, there has been an extraordinary development of computer-aided tools intended to generate, present or communicate 3D models. But there has not been a comparable progress in the development of 3D-CAD systems intended to assist designers in representing and manipulating both geometric and non-geometric design information based on solid models, thus facilitating concurrent engineering (CE). Design objects continue to be produced by traditional means using the computer as little more than a drafting tool. In addition, the state-of-the-art 3D-CAD systems are incapable of encoding engineering uncertainties since only precise single-valued assignments are allowed for their modeling operations. Recently, set-based CE (SBCE) has been attracting public attention as an emerging CE paradigm. Such a set-based design (SBD) approach presents many possibilities in handling the uncertainties that are intrinsic at the early phases of design. This paper addresses a novel concept – set-based parametric design (SBPD) – which combines the SBD practice with the parametric modeling technique widely used in most 3D-CAD systems. A preference set-based design (PSD) model and a design information solid (DIS) model are proposed to incorporate the SBPD concept into the current 3D-CAD systems. Finally, a prototype system is implemented to illustrate the potential to achieve a SBPD practice.

DESIGN FOR LOGISTICS IN SET-BASED CONCURRENT ENGINEERING ENVIRONMENT

ABSTRACT Design for Logistics (DFL) and Set-based Concurrent Engineering (SBCE) are two conventionally separated methodologies for product design. The former intends to design products by taking into consideration the logistics system that the product needs to fit in, whereas the latter explores a set of design alternatives to converge on a final specification for both product and processes. Within the scheme of integrating DFL and SBCE, we develop a decision support framework to estimate logistics time and cost for a set of design alternatives and determine the best design by making tradeoff between these two performance measures. In the proposed framework, High Level Petri Nets, Activity Based Costing, and TOPSIS are applied for the necessary functions.

Novel space-based design methodology for preliminary engineering design

This work is motivated from set-based concurrent engineering (SBCE) paradigm. In contrast to the traditional design practice, SBCE considers a broader range of design possibilities (i.e., design space) from the outset, explicitly communicates and reasons about sets of design alternatives, and gradually narrows the sets to eliminate inferior alternatives until a final solution remains. Thus, the key to success of SBCE is the proper implementation of the space representation method to define the possible design region, the space mapping method to obtain the performance space achievable by the initial design space, and the space narrowing method to eliminate infeasible subspaces from the initial design space. This paper proposes a novel space-based design methodology for preliminary engineering design. The main characteristic features of our approach are to incorporate the designer’s preference structure with degrees of desirability in specifying both design space and performance space, and to find a ranged set of design solutions that satisfy changing sets of performance requirements through set-to-set space mapping from design space to performance space and space narrowing to eliminate infeasible design subspaces. Central to the proposed design methodology is the integration of meta-modeling techniques, modified fuzzy arithmetic, design of experiment (DoE), robust design techniques, and uncertainty analysis. A preliminary parametric design example of a vehicle side impact beam is demonstrated to show the effectiveness of the proposed methodology and its availability in the large-scale multi-objective design synthesis problem.

Representing and Aggregating Engineering Quantities with Preference Structure for Set-based Concurrent Engineering

The early phase of design intrinsically contains multiple sources of uncertainties in describing the design, and nevertheless the decision-making process at this phase exerts a critical effect upon drawing a successful design. Recently, set-based concurrent engineering (SBCE) has been attracting public attention as an emerging CE paradigm. Representing and communicating set-valued information are useful in handling engineering uncertainties and efficient for the collaboration between designers in the CE environment. Even if we can readily know that SBCE is efficient and powerful enough for large-scale design and management, the existing literature does not give the details of methods to achieve SBCE principles. We have developed a computer-based framework, called ‘preference set-based design’ (PSD), for implementing SBCE principles, which consists of set representation, propagation, modification, narrowing, and aggregation methods. This article focuses on the set representation and aggregation methods that play an important role in the CE environment. This article proposes new engineering quantities that can capture the designer’s preference structure on both the continuous and the discrete sets. A new aggregation method is presented to aggregate the proposed engineering quantities. A comparative analysis with the existing representation and aggregation techniques is also provided.

Involving suppliers in product development in the United States and Japan: evidence for set-based concurrent engineering

Concurrent engineering (CE) involves a widely recognized revolution in the social organization of product development and a corresponding revolution in the underlying paradigm of design. We distinguish between two paradigms-point-based design and set-based design-and argue that effective, truly concurrent design requires shifting to a paradigm where design team members reason and communicate about sets of designs which we call "set-based concurrent engineering". A survey of 92 Japanese and 119 US automotive parts suppliers who design their own products sought to quantify the pervasiveness and correlates of "set-based approaches". The survey evidence indicates that set-based design communication is more prevalent among Japanese than among US parts suppliers, and is correlated with certain product development characteristics including years of experience with early involvement of suppliers in design, the degree of product-process design overlap, the degree to which subsystems are interdependent, and the use of quality function deployment (QFD).