How has Japan become a major economic power, a world leader in the automotive and electronics industries? What is the secret of their success? The consensus has been that, though the Japanese are not particularly innovative, they are exceptionally skilful at imitation, at improving products that already exist. But now two leading Japanese business experts, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hiro Takeuchi, turn this conventional wisdom on its head: Japanese firms are successful, they contend, precisely because they are innovative, because they create new knowledge and use it to produce successful products and technologies. Examining case studies drawn from such firms as Honda, Canon, Matsushita, NEC, 3M, GE, and the U.S. Marines, this book reveals how Japanese companies translate tacit to explicit knowledge and use it to produce new processes, products, and services.

The knowledge-creating company : how Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation

This article examines the function of documents as a data source in qualitative research and discusses document analysis procedure in the context of actual research experiences. Targeted to research novices, the article takes a nuts‐and‐bolts approach to document analysis. It describes the nature and forms of documents, outlines the advantages and limitations of document analysis, and offers specific examples of the use of documents in the research process. The application of document analysis to a grounded theory study is illustrated.

Document Analysis as a Qualitative Research Method

Social Network Analysis

The circular economy concept has gained momentum both among scholars and practitioners. However, critics claim that it means many different things to different people. This paper provides further evidence for these critics. The aim of this paper is to create transparency regarding the current understandings of the circular economy concept. For this purpose, we have gathered 114 circular economy definitions which were coded on 17 dimensions. Our findings indicate that the circular economy is most frequently depicted as a combination of reduce, reuse and recycle activities, whereas it is oftentimes not highlighted that CE necessitates a systemic shift. We further find that the definitions show few explicit linkages of the circular economy concept to sustainable development. The main aim of the circular economy is considered to be economic prosperity, followed by environmental quality; its impact on social equity and future generations is barely mentioned. Furthermore, neither business models nor consumers are frequently outlined as enablers of the circular economy. We critically discuss the various circular economy conceptualizations throughout this paper. Overall, we hope to contribute via this study towards the coherence of the circular economy concept; we presume that significantly varying circular economy definitions may eventually result in the collapse of the concept.

Conceptualizing the circular economy: An analysis of 114 definitions

This paper is based on the premises that the purpose of engineering education is to graduate engineers who can design, and that design thinking is complex. The paper begins by briefly reviewing the history and role of design in the engineering curriculum. Several dimensions of design thinking are then detailed, explaining why design is hard to learn and harder still to teach, and outlining the research available on how well design thinking skills are learned. The currently most-favored pedagogical model for teaching design, project-based learning (PBL), is explored next, along with available assessment data on its success. Two contexts for PBL are emphasized: first-year cornerstone courses and globally dispersed PBL courses. Finally, the paper lists some of the open research questions that must be answered to identify the best pedagogical practices of improving design learning, after which it closes by making recommendations for research aimed at enhancing design learning.

Engineering Design Thinking, Teaching, and Learning

The generation of digital objects are present throughout the work that is undertaken during the engineering design process. Although it is self-evident that these objects have been created by engineers to support their work, little research has been performed to understand whether there are underlying signatures in their generation that could provide useful insights to the management of the project. In order to address this, this paper presents some initial insights from the analysis of the generation of digital objects from an engineering project, and discusses potential signatures.

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Understanding the Engineering Design Process through the Evolution of Engineering Digital Objects

In a modern product development process such as in the automotive and aerospace sectors, extensive analytical and simulation approaches often are used to assess the ability of a design in fulfilling its requirements. Consideration of uncertainty in such situations is critical in ensuring a reliable design is produced. Probabilistic methods facilitate an improved under- standing of design performance through characterization of uncertainty in the design para- meters. The probabilistic methods developed over the past several decades have a range of capabilities and modes of application, for example, to predict reliability, for optimization, and to perform sensitivity studies, but have yet to be taken up routinely by industry due to a number of reasons. In this paper, issues that have typically inhibited their use or prevented a successful outcome are addressed through a systematic framework for improved utility and successful application of probabilistic designing for mechanical reliability.

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Improved utility and application of probabilistic methods for reliable mechanical design

Engineering designers are required to consider many factors concurrently when evolving a design, one such factor being the manufacturing process by which the product will be realized. The selection of such a process involves filtering available processes according to the current design situation, and providing detailed information describing this subset of processes such that the engineer may further refine the design. The approach described in this paper allows an engineer to browse documented manufacturing process information through a faceted classification (FC) system. Where traditional hierarchical classifications are notably viewpoint-dependent, an FC essentially comprises concurrent classification schemes (facets). A designer may browse within and across any combination of facets of interest and make selections at any given level of granularity. The use of a classification scheme provides a degree of abstraction, useful when certain process capabilities may not be directly expressible as parameters. A software environment, Waypoint, has been developed which assists in the construction and population of the faceted scheme, supports the designer in browsing, and through which relevant documentation may be identified and retrieved. The approach is demonstrated upon process descriptions obtained from an engineering textbook, although it may be applied to any given document corpus.

Application of faceted classification in the support of manufacturing process selection

Many organizations are increasingly relying on design simulation rather than expensive and time-consuming prototype testing for product evaluation. However, uncertainties in analytical and computational methods need to be understood in order to improve confidence in their use, and models need to be validated. This paper presents a case study of a MacPherson strut automotive suspension analysis, and evaluates the uncertainties in the modelling of this complex dynamic problem using a simplified analytical model and a complex computational model. In both cases, variability in design variables is characterized using probabilistic design methods. As a first step, the model variables are described by assumed datasets, which are collated from several sources such as tolerances specified in drawings, expert opinion, published data, etc. Measurement of the properties of the suspension system components is then performed (spring stiffness, damping coefficient, etc.), and the statistical parameters so obtained are used in probabilistic calculations for specified time sequences from measured test track road load data. The results are used to accumulate evidence of uncertainties in analytical and computational methods, to correlate predicted results to experimental data for vehicle chassis top mount force, and to derive sensitivity measures. A response surface function is approximated which is useful for parametric studies for new variants of the system studied. Sources of uncertainty in this case study and methods for improving the correlations are then suggested.

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Uncertainty modelling of a suspension unit

This paper explores how 'creativity' and 'innovation' are most usefully modelled for the modern design context invariably consisting of conflicting technical, economical, organisational and social demands. Section 2 summarises the experiences and observations of engineers and the most comprehensive theories of creativity and innovation proposed by psychologists and educators, which set the stage for a generic model. Section 3 evaluates and synthesises the scope and use of over 100 commercially available tools to enhance creativity and innovation. We place this in the context of the 'processes of creating' outlined in the psychological literature as well as those generally accepted to lead to internationally competitive outcomes in engineering, business, sociology and literature, among others. The series of tables defines a preliminary Taxonomy of Tools to enable potential users to clarify how and where additional information or help should be solicited, to streamline any stage of engineering design. Section 4 elucidates a 'process of creating' as a generic model, which illustrates how contradictory input data become novel outcomes in processes that co-evolve the bodies of knowledge on both sides of a problem?solution equation. The model, in contrast to previous theories, is not vague ? apparent contradictions between design demands can be resolved in precise steps, as long as the starting point of all actors/stakeholders is made coincident.

Chris McMahon

Papers

Understanding the Engineering Design Process through the Evolution of Engineering Digital Objects

Improved utility and application of probabilistic methods for reliable mechanical design

Application of faceted classification in the support of manufacturing process selection

Uncertainty modelling of a suspension unit

A generic model for creativity and innovation: overview for early phases of engineering design