A process model based methodology to support conflict management

The product design development has increasingly become a collaborative process. Conflicts often appear in the design process due to multi-actors interactions. Therefore, a critical element of collaborative design would be conflict situations resolution. In this paper, a methodology, based on a process model, is proposed to support conflict management. This methodology deals mainly with the conflict resolution team identification and the solution impact evaluation issues. The proposed process model allows the design process traceability and the data dependencies network identification; which making it be possible to identify the conflict resolution actors as well as to evaluate the selected solution impact. Copyright © 2006 IFAC.

Assessing the potential of yield improvements, through process scrap reduction, for energy and CO2 abatement in the steel and aluminium sectors

Targets to cut 2050 CO2 emissions in the steel and aluminium sectors by 50%, whilst demand is expected to double, cannot be met by energy efficiency measures alone, so options that reduce total demand for liquid metal production must also be considered. Such reductions could occur through reduced demand for final goods (for instance by life extension), reduced demand for material use in each product (for instance by lightweight design) or reduced demand for material to make existing products. The last option, improving the yield of manufacturing processes from liquid metal to final product, is attractive in being invisible to the final customer, but has had little attention to date. Accordingly this paper aims to provide an estimate of the potential to make existing products with less liquid metal production. Yield ratios have been measured for five case study products, through a series of detailed factory visits, along each supply chain. The results of these studies, presented on graphs of cumulative energy against yield, demonstrate how the embodied energy in final products may be up to 15 times greater than the energy required to make liquid metal, due to yield losses. A top-down evaluation of the global flows of steel and aluminium showed that 26% of liquid steel and 41% of liquid aluminium produced does not make it into final products, but is diverted as process scrap and recycled. Reducing scrap substitutes production by recycling and could reduce total energy use by 17% and 6% and total CO 2 emissions by 16% and 7% for the steel and aluminium industries respectively, using forming and fabrication energy values from the case studies. The abatement potential of process scrap elimination is similar in magnitude to worldwide implementation of best available standards of energy efficiency and demonstrates how decreasing the recycled content may sometimes result in emission reductions. Evidence from the case studies suggests that whilst most companies are aware of their own yield ratios, few, if any, are fully aware of cumulative losses along their whole supply chain. Addressing yield losses requires this awareness to motivate collaborative approaches to improvement. © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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.

Mapping experience in organizations: A learning process for strategic technology planning

Today's fast-paced, dynamic environments mean that for organizations to keep "ahead of the game", engineering managers need to maximize current opportunities and avoid repeating past mistakes. This article describes the development study of a collaborative strategic management tool - the Experience Scan to capture past experience and apply learning from this to present and future situations. Experience Scan workshops were held in a number of different technology organizations, developing and refining the tool until its format stabilized. From participants' feedback, the workshop-based tool was judged to be a useful and efficient mechanism for communication and knowledge management, contributing to organizational learning.