Group Design-Build-Test Projects as the Core of an Integrated Curriculum in Product Design and Development

The School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Queen’s University Belfast introduced a new degree programme in Product Design and Development (PDD) in 2004. As well as setting out to meet all UK-SPEC requirements, the entirely new curriculum was developed in line with the syllabus and standards defined by the CDIO Initiative, an international collaboration of universities aiming to improve the education of engineering students. The CDIO ethos is that students are taught in the context of conceiving, designing, implementing and operating a product or system. Fundamental to this is an integrated curriculum with multiple Design-Build-Test (DBT) experiences at the core. Unlike most traditional engineering courses the PDD degree features group DBT projects in all years of the programme. The projects increase in complexity and challenge in a staged manner, with learning outcomes guided by Bloom’s taxonomy of learning domains. The integrated course structure enables the immediate application of disciplinary knowledge, gained from other modules, as well as development of professional skills and attributes in the context of the DBT activity. This has a positive impact on student engagement and the embedding of these relevant skills, identified from a stakeholder survey, has also been shown to better prepare students for professional practice. This paper will detail the methodology used in the development of the curriculum, refinements that have been made during the first five years of operation and discuss the resource and staffing issues raised in facilitating such a learning environment.

Business concept design of an innovative product: Partnership between Nmusic and Rovio Entertainment Ltd.

Field Lab in Entrepreneurial Innovative Ventures

Kinetic and product studies for the oxidtion of organic sulfides and sulfoxides in the presence of transition metal complexes

Rates and products of the oxidation of diphenyl sulfide, phenyl methyl sulfide, p-chlorophenyl methyl sulfide and diphenyl sulfoxide have been determined. Oxidants included t-Bu02H alone, t-Bu02H plus molybdenum or vanadium catalysts and the molybdenum peroxo complex Mo0(02)2*HMPT. Reactions were chiefly carried out in ethanol at temperatures ranging from 20° to 65°C. Oxidation of diphenyl sulfide by t-Bu02H in absolute ethanol at 65°C followed second-order kinetics with k2 = 5.61 x 10 G M~1s"1, and yielded only diphenyl sulfoxide. The Mo(C0)g-catalyzed reaction gave both the sulfoxide and the sulfone with consecutive third-order kinetics. Rate = k3[Mo][t-Bu02H][Ph2S] + k^[Mo][t-Bu02H][Ph2S0], where log k3 = 12.62 - 18500/RT, and log k^ = 10.73 - 17400/RT. In the absence of diphenyl sulfide, diphenyl sulfoxide did not react with t-Bu02H plus molybdenum catalysts, but was oxidized by t-Bu02H-V0(acac)2. The uncatalyzed oxidation of phenyl methyl sulfide by t-Bu02H in absolute ethanol at 65°C gave a second-order rate constant, k = 3.48 x 10~"5 M^s""1. With added Mo(C0)g, the product was mainly phenyl methyl sulfoxide; Rate = k3[Mo][t-Bu02H][PhSCH3] where log k3 = 22.0 - 44500/RT. Both diphenyl sulfide and diphenyl sulfoxide react readily with the molybdenum peroxy complex, Mo0(02)2'HMPT in absolute ethanol at 35°C, yielding diphenyl sulfone. The observed features are mainly in agreement with the literature on metal ion-catalyzed oxidations of organic compounds by hydroperoxides. These indicate the formation of an active catalyst and the complexation of t-Bu02H with the catalyst. However, the relatively large difference between the activation energies for diphenyl sulfide and phenyl methyl sulfide, and the non-reactivity of diphenyl sulfoxide suggest the involvement of sulfide in the production of an active species.

Reqsys-MDD: uma ferramenta para mapeamento entre modelos de features e requisitos em linhas de produto de software

The approach Software Product Line (SPL) has become very promising these days, since it allows the production of customized systems on large scale through product families. For the modeling of these families the Features Model is being widely used, however, it is a model that has low level of detail and not may be sufficient to guide the development team of LPS. Thus, it is recommended add the Features Model to other models representing the system from other perspectives. The goals model PL-AOVgraph can assume this role complementary to the Features Model, since it has a to context oriented language of LPS's, which allows the requirements modeling in detail and identification of crosscutting concerns that may arise as result of variability. In order to insert PL-AOVgraph in development of LPS's, this paper proposes a bi-directional mapping between PL-AOVgraph and Features Model, which will be automated by tool ReqSys-MDD. This tool uses the approach of Model-Driven Development (MDD), which allows the construction of systems from high level models through successive transformations. This enables the integration of ReqSys-MDD with other tools MDD that use their output models as input to other transformations. So it is possible keep consistency among the models involved, avoiding loss of informations on transitions between stages of development

Stylized features of the investment-growth connection in Latin America, 1980-2012

Estimates of investment and its components in Latin America over the past 30 years are used to review stylized facts relating to investment and explore factors that explain its connection with economic growth. In particular, the low level of investment, the reduction in public spending in the 1980s and its partial recovery along with private investment between 2003 and 2010 are explored. It is found that the increase in national income —on the back of rising terms of trade— made it possible to increase national saving and its contribution to financing investment between 2004 and 2008. The analysis of causality between the investment ratio and growth in gross domestic product (gdp) suggest that —for a considerable number of Latin American countries— changes in the growth rate have preceded changes in the investment ration in the period under study.

Designing Software Product Lines for Testability

Software product line (SPL) engineering offers several advantages in the development of families of software products such as reduced costs, high quality and a short time to market. A software product line is a set of software intensive systems, each of which shares a common core set of functionalities, but also differs from the other products through customization tailored to fit the needs of individual groups of customers. The differences between products within the family are well-understood and organized into a feature model that represents the variability of the SPL. Products can then be built by generating and composing features described in the feature model. Testing of software product lines has become a bottleneck in the SPL development lifecycle, since many of the techniques used in their testing have been borrowed from traditional software testing and do not directly take advantage of the similarities between products. This limits the overall gains that can be achieved in SPL engineering. Recent work proposed by both industry and the research community for improving SPL testing has begun to consider this problem, but there is still a need for better testing techniques that are tailored to SPL development. In this thesis, I make two primary contributions to software product line testing. First I propose a new definition for testability of SPLs that is based on the ability to re-use test cases between products without a loss of fault detection effectiveness. I build on this idea to identify elements of the feature model that contribute positively and/or negatively towards SPL testability. Second, I provide a graph based testing approach called the FIG Basis Path method that selects products and features for testing based on a feature dependency graph. This method should increase our ability to re-use results of test cases across successive products in the family and reduce testing effort. I report the results of a case study involving several non-trivial SPLs and show that for these objects, the FIG Basis Path method is as effective as testing all products, but requires us to test no more than 24% of the products in the SPL.

Brand formative design - development and assessment of product design from a future, brand and consumer perspective

With this dissertation research we investigate intersections between design and marketing and in this respect, which factors do contribute that a product design becomes brand formative. We have developed a Brand Formative Design (BFD) framework, which investigates individual design features in a holistic, comparable, brand relevant, and consumer specific context. We discuss what kinds of characteristics contribute to BFD but also illuminate how they should be applied and examine: rnA holistic framework leading to Brand Formative Design. Identification and assessment of BFD Drivers. The dissection of products into three Distinctive Design Levels. The detection of surprising design preferences. The appropriate degree of scheme deviation with evolutionary design. Simulated BFD development processes with three different products and the integration of consumers. Future oriented objectification, comparability and assessment of design. Recommendations for the management of design in a brand specific context. Design is a product feature, which contributes significantly to the success of products. However, the development of new design contains challenges. Design can hardly be objectified; many people have an opinion concerning the attractiveness of new products but cannot formulate their future preferences. Product design is widely developed based on intuition, which can be difficult for the management of design. Here the concept of Brand Formative Design can provide a framework which contributes to structure, objectify, develop and assess new evolutionary design in brand and future relevant contexts, but also integrates consumers and their preferences without restricting creativity too much.

A new universal, standardized implant database for product identification: a unique tool for arthroplasty registries.

INTRODUCTION Every joint registry aims to improve patient care by identifying implants that have an inferior performance. For this reason, each registry records the implant name that has been used in the individual patient. In most registries, a paper-based approach has been utilized for this purpose. However, in addition to being time-consuming, this approach does not account for the fact that failure patterns are not necessarily implant specific but can be associated with design features that are used in a number of implants. Therefore, we aimed to develop and evaluate an implant product library that allows both time saving barcode scanning on site in the hospital for the registration of the implant components and a detailed description of implant specifications. MATERIALS AND METHODS A task force consisting of representatives of the German Arthroplasty Registry, industry, and computer specialists agreed on a solution that allows barcode scanning of implant components and that also uses a detailed standardized classification describing arthroplasty components. The manufacturers classified all their components that are sold in Germany according to this classification. The implant database was analyzed regarding the completeness of components by algorithms and real-time data. RESULTS The implant library could be set up successfully. At this point, the implant database includes more than 38,000 items, of which all were classified by the manufacturers according to the predefined scheme. Using patient data from the German Arthroplasty Registry, several errors in the database were detected, all of which were corrected by the respective implant manufacturers. CONCLUSIONS The implant library that was developed for the German Arthroplasty Registry allows not only on-site barcode scanning for the registration of the implant components but also its classification tree allows a sophisticated analysis regarding implant characteristics, regardless of brand or manufacturer. The database is maintained by the implant manufacturers, thereby allowing registries to focus their resources on other areas of research. The database might represent a possible global model, which might encourage harmonization between joint replacement registries enabling comparisons between joint replacement registries.

Runtime variability for dynamic reconfiguration in wireless sensor network product lines

Runtime variability is a key technique for the success of Dynamic Software Product Lines (DSPLs), as certain application demand reconfiguration of system features and execution plans at runtime. In this emerging research work we address the problem of dynamic changes in feature models in sensor networks product families, where nodes of the network demand dynamic reconfiguration at post-deployment time.

FPLA: a modeling framework for describing flexible software product line architecture

Nowadays, Software Product Line (SPL) engineering [1] has been widely-adopted in software development due to the significant improvements that has provided, such as reducing cost and time-to-market and providing flexibility to respond to planned changes [2]. SPL takes advantage of common features among the products of a family through the systematic reuse of the core-assets and the effective management of variabilities across the products. SPL features are realized at the architectural level in product-line architecture (PLA) models. Therefore, suitable modeling and specification techniques are required to model variability. In fact, architectural variability modeling has become a challenge for SPLE due to the fact that PLA modeling requires not only modeling variability at the level of the external architecture configuration (see [3,4] literature reviews), but also at the level of internal specification of components [5]. In addition, PLA modeling requires preserving the traceability between features and PLAs. Finally, it is important to take into account that PLA modeling should guide architects in modeling the PLA core assets and variability, and in deriving the customized products. To deal with these needs, we present in this demonstration the FPLA Modeling Framework.

VentanaTM power train features and performance

Most CPV systems are based on Fresnel lenses. Among these, LPI-patented Fresnel-Köhler (FK) concentrator outstands owing to performance and practical reasons. The VentanaTM power train is the first off-the-shelf commercial product based on the FK and comprises both the primary (POE) lenses (a 36-units 1×1 m2 acrylic panel manufactured by EVONIK and 10×) and glass (or Savosil) secondary optics (SOE). This high concentration optical train (Cg=1,024×, ~250mm optical depth) fits with 5×5 mm2 (at least) solar cells. The optical train is the fruit of a 1-year development that has included design, modeling, prototyping and characterization, and through the process LPI had the opportunity to find out how well the actual performance correlates with models, but also learned practical aspects of a CPV system of this kind, some of which have very positive impact on system performance and reliability.

Agile Product Inception: Framework Analysis and Support

In this dissertation, after testing that neither the definition of Agile methodologies, nor the current tools that support them, such as Scrum or XP, gave guidance for stages of software development prior to the definition of the first interaction of development; we proceeded to study the state of the art of Inception techniques, that is, techniques to deal with this early phase of the project, that would help guide its development. From the analysis of these Inception techniques, we defined what we considered as the essential properties of an Inception framework. With that list at hand, it was found that no current Inception framework supported all the features, also, we found that it did not exist, either, any software application on the market that did it. Finally, after checking the above gaps, we defined the Inception framework "Agile Incepti-ON", with all the practices necessary to meet the requirements specified above. In addition to this, a software application was developed to support the practices defined in the Inception framework, called "Agile Dojo".

An investigation into the impact of safety features on the ergonomics of surgical scalpels

In the case of surgical scalpels, blade retraction and disposability have been incorporated into a number of commercial designs to address sharps injury and infection transmission issues. Despite these new designs, the traditional metal reusable scalpel is still extensively used and this paper attempts to determine whether the introduction of safety features has compromised the ergonomics and so potentially the take-up of the newer designs. Examples of scalpels have been analysed to determine the ergonomic impact of these design changes. Trials and questionnaires were carried out using both clinical and non-clinical user groups, with the trials making use of assessment of incision quality, cutting force, electromyography and video monitoring. The results showed that ergonomic performance was altered by the design changes and that while these could be for the worse, the introduction of safety features could act as a catalyst to encourage re-evaluation of the ergonomic demands of a highly traditional product.

State-of-the-art in product-service systems

A Product-Service System (PSS) is an integrated combination of products and services. This Western concept embraces a service-led competitive strategy, environmental sustainability, and the basis to differentiate from competitors who simply offer lower priced products. This paper aims to report the state-of-the-art of PSS research by presenting a clinical review of literature currently available on this topic. The literature is classified and the major outcomes of each study are addressed and analysed. On this basis, this paper defines the PSS concept, reports on its origin and features, gives examples of applications along with potential benefits and barriers to adoption, summarizes available tools and methodologies, and identifies future research challenges.

Product-service systems revisited

There is a growing interest around the potential value of service-led competitive strategies to UK based manufacturers. A Product Service-System (PSS) is one form of such a strategy and is based on integrated combination of products and services. This concept also embraces environmental sustainability. This paper aims to summarise the state-of-the-art of PSS research by presenting a review of literature currently available on this topic. The literature search is described and the major outcomes of the study are presented. On this basis, this paper defines the PSS concept, reports on its origin and features.