Environmental priorities in strategic product development

This paper reports some results from a major research project on the integration of environmental issues into design in the electrical and electronic industry. Product development practice and ecodesign methods were examined along with qualitative data from 19 manufacturers, using interviews and an action research methodology. A four-stage framework for ecodesign practice resulted: first, to make an environmental assessment from a life cycle viewpoint; then to communicate the analysis and collect feedback; thirdly to prioritize the environmental issues and finally to complete the design using relevant tools and methods. This 'ARPI' framework (analyse, report, prioritize, improve) applies to both strategic and operational levels. Initial testing of the framework in collaborating companies highlighted difficulties with communication with design teams; the role of 'ecodesign champions' is explained. Other challenges are the development of customized tools and the training of designers. The study concludes that the prioritization step is critical, as it simplifies and clarifies the tasks in design that take place after formulation of the specification. Copyright (C) 2000 John Wiley and Sons, Ltd. and ERP Environment.

Top Management Involvement in New Product Development: A Review and Synthesis

Established literature on new product development (NPD) management recognizes top management involvement (TMI) as one of the most critical success factors. With increasing pressure to sustain competitive advantage and growth, NPD activities remain the focus of close interest from top management in many organizations. TMI in the NPD domain is receiving increasing academic attention. Despite its criticality, there is no systematic review of the existing literature to inform and stimulate researchers in the field for further investigation. This paper introduces the current state of literature on TMI in NPD, synthesizes important findings, and identifies the gaps and deficiencies in this research stream. The contents of the selected articles, which investigated TMI in NPD, are analyzed based on the type of the study, level of analysis, research methodology, operationalization of TMI, and main findings. Additionally, other studies, which did not directly investigate TMI and support in NPD, but were sufficiently related, are briefly summarized. As a result of this detailed literature review, it can be stated that both exploratory and relational studies provide rich evidence on the critical role of top management in NPD. However, the identified gaps and deficiencies in this research stream call for a better theoretical understanding and well-defined constructs of TMI in the NPD domain for different levels of analysis for future studies.

Exploring an effective model of new product development in medical devices: A knowledge cluster approach

This study proposes a new product development (NPD) model that aims to improve the effectiveness of innovative NPD in the medical devices. By adopting open innovation theory and applying an in-depth investigation methodology, this paper proposes a knowledge cluster that improves the integration of interdisciplinary human resources and enhances the acquirement of innovative technologies. A knowledge cluster approach helps gather, organise, synthesise, and accumulate knowledge in order to become the impetus for innovation. Although enterprises are no longer the principals of research and development, they should still be capable of integrating professional physicians, external groups, and individuals through the knowledge cluster platform. However, in order to support an effective NPD model, enterprises should provide adequate incentives and trust to external individuals or groups willing to contribute their expertise and knowledge to this knowledge cluster platform. Copyright © 2013 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Lean product development in practice: Insights from 4 companies

This paper aims to elucidate practitioners' understanding and implementation of Lean in Product Development (LPD). We report on a workshop held in the UK during 2012. Managers and engineers from four organizations discussed their understanding of LPD and their ideas and practice regarding management and assessment of value and waste. The study resulted in a set of insights into current practice and lean thinking from the industry perspective. Building on this, the paper introduces a balanced value and waste model that can be used by practitioners as a checklist to identify issues that need to be considered when applying LPD. The main results indicate that organizations tend to focus on waste elimination rather than value enhancement in LPD. Moreover, the lean metrics that were discussed by the workshop participants do not link the strategic level with the operational one, and poorly reflect the value and waste generated in the process. Future directions for research are explored, and include the importance of a balanced approach considering both value and waste when applying LPD, and the need to link lean metrics with value and waste levels.

An investigation of customer delight during product evaluation: Implications for the development of desirable products

This paper reports findings from three research methods used to study customer delight during product evaluation. The results are framed in terms of existing models, high-lighting inadequacies in the assumptions these models make. Implications for product development are proposed in the form of practical strategies for understanding and delighting customers. © IMechE 2007.

Preliminary model development for predicting strength and stiffness of cement-stabilized soils using artificial neural networks

This paper presents ongoing work on data collection and collation from a large number of laboratory cement-stabilization projects worldwide. The aim is to employ Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) to establish relationships between variables, which define the properties of cement-stabilized soils, and the two parameters determined by the Unconfined Compression Test, the Unconfined Compressive Strength (UCS), and stiffness, using E50 calculated from UCS results. Bayesian predictive neural network models are developed to predict the UCS values of cement-stabilized inorganic clays/silts, as well as sands as a function of selected soil mix variables, such as grain size distribution, water content, cement content and curing time. A model which can predict the stiffness values of cement-stabilized clays/silts is also developed and compared to the UCS model. The UCS model results emulate known trends better and provide more accurate estimates than the results from the E50 stiffness model. © 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.

Automated meshing for aero-thermal analysis of complex automotive geometries

Successful product development, especially in motorsport, increasingly depends not just on the ability to simulate aero-thermal behavior of complex geometrical configurations, but also the ability to automate these simulations within a workflow and perform as many simulations as possible within constrained time frames. The core of these aero-thermal simulations - and usually the main bottleneck - is generating the computational mesh. This paper describes recent work aimed at developing a mesh generator which can reliably produce meshes for geometries of essentially arbitrary complexity in an automated manner and fast enough to keep up with the pace of an engineering development program. Our goal is to be able to script the mesh generation within an automated workflow - and forget it. © 2011 SAE International.

Why do firms acquire external technologies? Understanding the motivations for technology acquisitions

Why do firms acquire external technologies? Previous research indicates that there are a wide variety of motivations. These include the need to acquire valuable knowledge-based resources, to improve strategic flexibility, to experiment), to overcome organisational inertia, to mitigate risk and uncertainty, to reduce costs and development time in new product development, and the perception that the firm has the absorptive capacity to integrate acquisitions. In this paper we provide an in-depth literature review of the motivations for the acquisition of external technologies by firms. We find that these motivations can be broadly classed into four categories: (1) the development of technological capabilities, (2) the development of strategic options, (3) efficiency improvements, and (4) responses to the competitive environment. In light of this categorisation, we comment on how these different motivations connect to the wider issues of technology acquisition. © 2010 IEEE.

An evaluation of a new product data model

Engineering companies face many challenges today such as increased competition, higher expectations from consumers and decreasing product lifecycle times. This means that product development times must be reduced to meet these challenges. Concurrent engineering, reuse of engineering knowledge and the use of advanced methods and tools are among the ways of reducing product development times. Concurrent engineering is crucial in making sure that the products are designed with all issues considered simultaneously. The reuse of engineering knowledge allows existing solutions to be reused. It can also help to avoid the mistakes made in previous designs. Computer-based tools are used to store information, automate tasks, distribute work, perform simulation and so forth. This research concerns the evaluation of tools that can be used to support the design process. These tools are evaluated in terms of the capture of information generated during the design process. This information is vital to allow the reuse of knowledge. Present CAD systems store only information on the final definition of the product such as geometry, materials and manufacturing processes. Product Data Management (PDM) systems can manage all this CAD information along with other product related information. The research includes the evaluation of two PDM systems, Windchill and Metaphase, using the design of a single-handed water tap as a case study. The two PDMs were then compared to PROSUS/DDM. PROSUS is the Process-Based Support System proposed by [Blessing 94] using the same case study. The Design Data Model is the product data model that includes PROSUS. The results look promising. PROSUS/DDM is able to capture most design information and structure and present it logically. The design process and product information is related and stored within the DDM structure. The PDMs can capture most design information, but information from early stages of design is stored only as unstructured documentation. Some problems were found with PROSUS/DDM. A proposal is made that may make it possible to resolve these problems, but this will require further research.

The assembly of computational models for the collaborative development of virtual prototypes

In the context of collaborative product development, new requirements need to be accommodated for Virtual Prototyping Simulation (VPS), such as distributed processing and the integration of models created using different tools or languages. Existing solutions focus mainly on the implementation of distributed processing, but this paper explores the issues of combining different models (some of which may be proprietary) developed in different software environments. In this paper, we discuss several approaches for developing VPS, and suggest how it can best be integrated into the design process. An approach is developed to improve collaborative work in a VPS development by combining disparate computational models. Specifically, a system framework is proposed to separate the system-level modeling from the computational infrastructure. The implementation of a simple prototype demonstrates that such a paradigm is viable and thus provides a new means for distributed VPS development. © 2009 by ASME.