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.

Foresight vehicle programme - Customer understanding processes in design

Customer feedback is normally fed into product design and engineering via quality surveys and therefore mainly comprises negative comments: complaints about things gone wrong. Whilst eradication of such problems will result in a feeling of satisfaction in existing customers, it will not instil the sense of delight required to attract conquest buyers. CUPID's aim is to conceive and evaluate ideas to stimulate product desirability through the provision of delightful features and execution. By definition, surprise and delight features cannot be foreseen, so we have to understand sensory appeal and, therefore, the "hidden" voice of the customer. Copyright © 2002 Society of Automotive Engineers, Inc.

High quality assembly of phase-only liquid crystal on silicon ((LCOS) devices

Liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS) for phase-only holography is ideally made to better optical tolerance than that for conventional amplitude modulating applications. Die-level assembly is suited to custom devices and pre-production prototypes because of its flexibility and efficiency in conserving the silicon backplane. Combined with automated assembly, it will allow high reproducibility and fast turnaround time, paving the way for pre-production testing and customer sampling before mass production. Pre-assembly optical testing is the key element in the process. By taking into account the flatness of both the backplane and the front glass plate, we have assembled high quality LCOS devices. We have reached our aim of less than one quarter wavelength phase distortion across the active area. © 2011 IEEE.

Assessing the responsiveness of existing production operations

Production responsiveness refers to the ability of a production system to achieve its operational goals in the presence of supplier, internal and customer disturbances, where disturbances are those sources of change which occur independently of the system's intentions. A set of audit tools for assessing the responsiveness of production operations is being prepared as part of an EPSRC funded investigation. These tools are based on the idea that the ability to respond is linked to: the nature of the disturbances or changes requiring a response; their impact on production goals; and the inherent response capabilities of the operation. These response capabilities include information gathering and processing (to detect disturbances and production conditions), decision processes (which initiate system responses to disturbances) and various types of process flexibilities and buffers (which provide the physical means of dealing with disturbances). The paper discusses concepts and issues associated with production responsiveness, describes the audit tools that have been developed and illustrates their use in the context of a steel manufacturing plant.

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.

Strategies for designing and developing services for manufacturing firms

Product/service-systems (PSS) are in effect an approach to designing integrated products and services with a focus on both customer and product life cycle activities. A range of service-oriented design strategies can be found in current literature, from product-oriented DfX approaches to more customer-oriented approaches, such as integrated solutions. In this article, design strategies related to different types of services are mapped. Case studies from two industrial companies are used to confront the existing literature in order to improve the understanding of how manufacturing companies may align their product and service development activities with their business strategies. © 2010.

Product scheduling for thermal energy reduction in papermaking industries

Papermaking is considered as an energy-intensive industry partly due to the fact that the machinery and procedures have been designed at the time when energy was both cheap and plentiful. A typical paper machine manufactures a variety of different products (grades) which impose variable per-unit raw material and energy costs to the mill. It is known that during a grade change operation the products are not market-worthy. Therefore, two different production regimes, i.e. steady state and grade transition can be recognised in papermaking practice. Among the costs associated with paper manufacture, the energy cost is 'more variable' due to (usually) day-to-day variations of the energy prices. Moreover, the production of a grade is often constrained by customer delivery time requirements. Given the above constraints and production modes, the product scheduling technique proposed in this paper aims at optimising the sequence of orders in a single machine so that the cost of production (mainly determined by the energy) is minimised. Simulation results obtained from a commercial board machine in the UK confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method. © 2011 IFAC.