Showing papers on "Product design specification published in 2008"

TerraSAR-X Ground Segment Basic Product Specification Document

Abstract: : TerraSAR-X is a joint project between the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the German industry (ASTRIUM). DLR owns and operates the satellite and the payload ground segment (PGS) and holds the rights for the scientific exploitation of the data. ASTRIUM holds the exclusive rights for the commercial exploitation of the data products. This document specifies the operational TerraSAR-X basic products generated at PGS for scientific and commercial use. In the context of the project the products are called basic products because they are the basis for higher level information products. The document summarizes the operation modes of TerraSAR-X and the characteristic parameters. It describes the product design criteria, lists the different product types and introduces their structure. The document in hand is supplemented by the Level 1b Product Format Specification document [RD 8] specifying the binary data formatting and the detailed annotation parameters of the product.

CPM2: A core model for product data

Abstract: The initial core product model (CPM), developed at NIST for the support of in-house research projects, has been extended to create CPM2, intended to support a broad range of information relevant to product lifecycle management. CPM2 is a generic, abstract model with generic semantics. CPM2 gives equal status to three aspects of a product or artifact: its function, its form, and its behavior. Thus, CPM2 can support functional reasoning about a product in the conceptual stages of design, the recording and the modeling of its behavior in the postdesign stages as well as the "traditional" design phases. Three levels of CPM2 models, denoted as the conceptual, intermediate, and implementation models, are described. Extensions of the initial CPM are briefly presented. The facilities in CPM2 for building experimental intermediate systems are demonstrated and a short illustrative example is given. The full practical evaluation of CPM2 will require the development and use of implementation models.

Country‐of‐origin contingencies: Competing perspectives on product familiarity and product involvement

Abstract: Purpose – This study was undertaken to clarify how product familiarity and product involvement can moderate the importance that consumers place on COO image when they evaluate products for purchase or consumption. The authors adopted a contingency approach and empirically examined, by way of competing hypotheses, the alternative possibilities by which product familiarity and product involvement may influence the importance that consumers place on COO image when they evaluate products.Design/methodology/approach – Data were gathered from 388 consumers in Australia across four different product classes. Data analysis was conducted using hierarchical regression analysis with interactions and post hoc slope analysis.Findings – Overall, the study findings suggest that the importance that consumers place on COO image when they evaluate products is contingent on the product context. Specifically, the study findings show that consumers consider COO image to be more important for their product evaluations when the...

Modular design to support green life-cycle engineering

Abstract: The severe competition in the market has driven enterprises to produce a wider variety of products to meet consumers' needs. However, frequent variation of product specifications causes the assembly and disassembly of components and modules to become more and more complicated. As a result, the issue of product modular design is a problem worthy of concern. In this study, engineering attributes were added to the liaison graph model for the evaluation of part connections. The engineering attributes added, including contact type, combination type, tool type, and accessed direction, serve to offer designers criteria for evaluating the component liaison intensity during the design stage. A grouping genetic algorithm (GGA) is then employed for clustering the components and crossover mechanisms are modified according to the need of modular design. Furthermore, a reasonable green modular design evaluation is conducted using the green material cost analysis. According to the results, adjusted design proposals are suggested and materials that cause less pollution are recommended to replace the components with pollution values higher than those in the module. Finally, the authors use Borland C++ 6.0 to evaluate the system and clustering method. To illustrate the methodology proposed in this study, a table lamp is offered as an example.

A product management challenge: Creating software product value through requirements selection

Abstract: It is important for a software company to maximize value creation for a given investment. The purpose of requirements engineering activities is to add business value that is accounted for in terms of return on investment of a software product. This paper provides insight into the release planning processes used in the software industry to create software product value, by presenting three case studies. It examines how IT professionals perceive value creation through requirements engineering and how the release planning process is conducted to create software product value. It also presents to what degree the major stakeholders' perspectives are represented in the decision-making process. Our findings show that the client and market base of the software product represents the most influential group in the decision to implement specific requirements. This is reflected both in terms of deciding the processes followed and the decision-making criteria applied when selecting requirements for the product. Furthermore, the management of software product value is dependant on the context in which the product exists. Factors, such as the maturity of the product, the marketplace in which it exists, and the development tools and methods available, influence the criteria that decide whether a requirement is included in a specific project or release.

Handbook of New Product Development Management

Abstract: Managing New Product Development: A Framework Technology Strategy Competitive Positioning Through New Product Development Economic Models of Product Family Design and Development Creativity in Product Development Resource Allocation and New Product Development Portfolio Management Organizing for New Product Development Product Development Performance Measures Modularity and Supplier Involvement in Product Development The Impact of Outsourcing on Product Integration and Other Organizational Challenges in Distributed Product Development Environments Hierarchical planning Coordination and Information Exchange Who Do I Listen to? The Role of the Customer on Product Evolution Delivering the Product: Defining Specifications Learning by Experimentation: Prototyping and Testing The Roles of Users, Experts and Institutions in Design Project Risk Management in New Product Development Evaluating the Product Use Cycle: Design for Service and Support Insights into New Service Development: A Stage-Gate Research Framework Approach

Geometrical product specifications - model for product life cycle

Abstract: As technology increases and performance requirements continually tighten, the cost and required precision of assemblies increase as well. There exists a strong need for increased attention to tolerance design to enable high-precision assemblies to be manufactured at lower cost. For automotive and aircraft industries, the tolerancing process has become an important issue in product and process design. There is an important question that would need to be looked into: ''How to define a coherent expression of Geometrical Product Specification during the tolerancing process along life cycle?''. There is a necessity for developing a complete answer representing standard tolerance practices. This paper proposes a model to allow a complete and coherent tolerancing process. The description of GeoSpelling, the model proposed to ISO for rebuilding standards in the fields of tolerancing and metrology, allows a unified description of geometrical specification. This model takes into account, not only the specification on isolated parts, but also on assemblies with the integration of the quantifier concept.

Product-service systems

Abstract: Analysing and managing requirements effectively is important for a successful development of problem solutions independent of whether they are products, services, software or product-service systems. Approaches to detect, structure and formalize requirements are already proposed by many authors, e.g. Pahl and Beitz [1] or Ehrlenspiel [2]. Most of these guidelines are in general applicable to nearly every product in mechanical engineering, but there is still a lack concerning requirements from areas like organization, service delivery, information and communication technologies and new business models in most generic guidelines. Especially in product-service systems these areas become more important than in case of conventional product development. Product-service systems (PSS) include product and service shares in one system. PSS are supposed to be integrated, customerand lifecycle-oriented solutions, which are “sold” as one package. Modern types of business models are used to operate such systems more efficiently regarding technical, economical and ecological aspects. Instead of purchase (product-oriented) the customer pays for system functionality or for a defined result. The payment can be arranged in different ways such as pay-per-unit, pay-per-use or flat rates. Supporting the generation, that is detection, structuring and formalization, of relevant requirements in PSS development is the purpose of this paper. A method to sustain this task will be introduced. In a first step it is used to “slices” a system into a set of pre-defined and optional “layers” containing physical and non-physical system elements to enable different views upon the PSS. Specially defined and clustered checklists are used to retrieve and formalize requirements in a second and third step.

Paradigm shift: unified and associative feature-based concurrent and collaborative engineering

Abstract: With widely used concurrent and collaborative engineering technologies, the validity and consistency of product information become important. In order to establish the state of the art, this paper reviews emerging concurrent and collaborative engineering approaches and emphasizes on the integration of different application systems across product life cycle management (PLM) stages. It is revealed that checking product information validity is difficult for the current computer-aided systems because engineering intent is at best partially represented in product models. It is also not easy to maintain the consistency among related product models because information associations are not established. The purpose of this review is to identify and analyze research issues with respect to information integration and sharing for future concurrent and collaborative engineering. A new paradigm of research from the angle of feature unification and association for product modeling and manufacturing is subsequently proposed.

Reconciling Automation and Flexibility in Product Derivation

Abstract: Product derivation, i.e. reusing core assets to build products, did not receive sufficient attention from the product-line community, yielding a frustrating situation. On the one hand, automated product derivation approaches are inflexible; they do not allow products meeting unforeseen, customer-specific, requirements. On the other hand, approaches that consider this issue do not provide adequate methodological guidelines nor automated support. This paper proposes an integrated product derivation approach reconciling the two views to offer both flexibility and automation. First, we perform a pre-configuration of the product by selecting desired features in a generic feature model and automatically composing their related product-line core assets. Then, we adapt the pre-configured product to its customer-specific requirements via derivation primitives combined by product engineers and controlled by constraints that flexibly set product line boundaries. Our process is supported by the Kermeta meta modeling environment and illustrated through an example.

A structured approach to predicting and managing technical interactions in software development

Abstract: One of the most difficult challenges of managing product development is identifying the individuals who need to coordinate closely their interdependencies during the design process. “Who should talk to whom?” and “Which interfaces should they talk about?” are key questions that engineering managers must address when planning and executing product development efforts. In this paper, I introduce the notion of the affiliation matrix to map the product architecture onto the organizational structure and predict potential technical communication patterns. By comparing potential interactions with actual communications, engineering managers can uncover product interfaces and organizational interactions that may require special managerial action during the design phase of development processes. This provides an integrated view of how process, product, and organizational structures align themselves when developing new products. I illustrate the implementation of this approach in a software development organization, which offers relevant insights about the challenges associated with managing new software development.

Planning and uncertainty in new product development

Abstract: The domain of New Product Development (NPD) is subject to considerable uncertainties. Aside from market-related sources of uncertainty, the degree of innovativeness of the underlying product concept is a significant source of uncertainty, as unclear goals and specifications like, e.g. product specifications may lead to substantial delays in the project. However, companies are required to manage the innovation process as efficiently as possible. The resulting conflicting demands often leave companies struggling to achieve both efficiency as well as flexibility due to their often opposing implications for organizing and managing NPD projects. In this context, planning plays a central role; however, its usefulness for NPD project success is perceived quite differently. While there are reports about a positive influence of initial planning on various success measures, others have questioned the effectiveness of elaborated initial planning and contend that the ability to rapidly react to changes later in the process and to improvise may lead to success in NPD. This study aims at achieving a better understanding of planning in NPD by investigating a sample of 475 Research & Development projects in Japanese electrical and mechanical engineering companies. Regression analysis is used to shed more light on the interplay of planning intensity, changes, and the degree of technological newness of the NPD project and their influence on project success. Our results indicate planning to be of value for different types of innovation projects. Furthermore, the influences of the variables in question vary with the success measures that are taken into account, indicating that a more detailed and contingent understanding of planning in NPD needs to be developed.

Design and manufacturing interface modelling for manufacturing processes selection and knowledge synthesis in design

Abstract: The research results presented in this paper are related to the specification of a method and models that tackle the problem of manufacturing processes selection and the integration, as soon as possible, of their constraints in the product modelling (i.e. information synthesis). This method is based on a skin and skeleton design/manufacturing interface model that ensures connection between design and manufacturing information. The use of these features is justified by their capacity to make a product representation which allows integration of both design and manufacture data and therefore assists the product breakdown definition (including the 3D forms) by least commitment. This method first analyses the product data issued from functional analysis and component selection (form, roughness, tolerance interval, etc.). Then, it deals with manufacturing information (manufacturing processes constraints). The approach is formalised with IDEF and UML models and has been consolidated with software developments based on C++ and open CASCADE technologies.

A framework for the integration of environmental and business aspects toward sustainable product development

Abstract: Growing environmental concerns, coupled with public pressure and stricter regulations, are fundamentally impacting the way companies design and launch new products across the world. Companies are recognising that implementing design for environment (DfE) in their product development process provides opportunities both for improving environmental aspects of a product and for enhancing the product competitiveness. Therefore, integrating environmental and business aspects for decision-making during DfE consideration are crucial in the product design process. The environmental aspect of the product is captured by the lifecycle assessment, and the result is directly introduced to the selection of DfE strategies followed by the multi-criteria decision-making process, in order to integrate business aspects. The proposed method may help the company systematically develop appropriate and profitable design for environment strategies for their product systems.

An integrated information system for product design planning

Abstract: In recent years, new product development (NPD) has become more and more competitive and globalized, and the planning phase is absolutely critical for the success of a NPD project. Quality function deployment (QFD) has been recognized as one of the most important approaches for NPD. Nevertheless, the issues of product design scheduling and costing have not been explicitly addressed in the deployment process. On the other hand, the design structure matrix (DSM), a popular representation and analysis technique, has led to its increasing use in a variety of contexts, including product development, project management and system engineering. In this paper, we develop a novel framework which integrates QFD and DSM to support product design planning, including product architecture/components deployment, design scheduling and costing. A knowledge-based database is developed to support the proposed framework. The details are presented and a prototype product design planning system is implemented with a practical application in the semiconductor industry, system-on-a-chip product design planning, to validate the completeness and benefits of the proposed approach.

The role of heavyweight product manager in new product development

Abstract: Purpose – This paper seeks to empirically investigate how a heavyweight product manager (HW) can impact the cross‐functional team and project performance (PP) through actively influencing the ways and the extent of strategic alignment (SA), shared project mission, and clarity of project targets in the early front‐end stage.Design/methodology/approach – Based on past studies on leadership role theory and goal‐setting theory for teams, this study hypothesizes that the role of the HW for SA of the project, shared project mission, and clarity of the project target are positively related. The study further hypothesizes that these roles of the HW can have a positive impact on PP measures such as product cost, time, and customer satisfaction.Findings – Primary data collected from 191 new product development (NPD) projects from the US automotive industry were analyzed using structural equation modeling techniques. All the hypotheses presented in this study regarding the role of the HW in a cross‐functional team a...

Legal Requirements, Compliance and Practice: An Industry Case Study in Accessibility

Abstract: U.S. laws and regulations are designed to support broad societal goals, such as accessibility, privacy and safety. To demonstrate that a product complies with these goals, businesses need to identify and refine legal requirements into product requirements and integrate the product requirements into their ongoing product design and testing processes. We report on an industry case study in which product requirements were specified to comply with Section 508 of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1998. This study sought to identify: limitations in existing requirements-acquisition methods; compliance gaps between previously specified product requirements and Section 508; and additional sources of knowledge that are necessary to refine legal requirements into product requirements to comply with the law. Our study reveals the need for a community of practice and generalizable techniques that can reduce ambiguity, complexity and redundancy in legal and product requirements and manage innovation in product requirements. We present these findings with several examples from Section 508 regulations and actual product requirements that are implemented in Cisco products.

Optimal platform investment for product family design

Abstract: Existing models for developing modular product families based on a common platform are either too engineering oriented or too marketing centric. In this paper, we propose an intermediate modeling ground that bridges this gap by simultaneously considering essential concepts from engineering and marketing to construct an alternative model for platform-based product families. In this model, each variant (in the platform-based product family) contributes a percentage to overall market coverage inside a target market segment. The extent to which a specific variant contributes to market coverage is linked to its degree of distinctiveness. On the other hand the cost of development of all variants (that constitute the product family) is also dependent on the degree of commonality between these variants. The objective of the model is to maximize market coverage subject to an available development budget. Based on a conceptual design of the product family, the proposed model suggests the optimal initial investment in the platform, the commonality level between variants, and the number of variants to be produced in order to maximize market coverage using both analytical and simulation techniques. An application example using an ice scraper product family is included to demonstrate the proposed model.

Product requirement specification in production model

Abstract: In various implementations, sales orders are received and product requirement specifications is generated based on the sales orders. Planning for the production of the goods occurs based on the product requirement specification and the goods are produced based on the plan.

The Transdisciplinary Product Development Lifecycle model

Abstract: In this paper, a new product development lifecycle model, the Transdisciplinary Product Development Lifecycle (TPDL) model, is explained. This new model is based on the axiomatic design (AD) method...

Decision-making coordination in collaborative product configuration

Abstract: In Software Product Lines (SPLs), product configuration is a decision-making process in which a group of stakeholders choose features for a product. Unfortunately, current configuration technology is essentially single-user-based in which user requirements are interpreted and translated into configuration decisions by a single role commonly referred to as the product manager. This process can be error-prone and time-consuming as it commonly requires back-and-forth interactions between the product manager and the stakeholders to cope with decision conflicts. In this paper, we propose an approach to Collaborative Product Configuration (CPC) that aims at providing effective support for coordinating teamwork decision-making in the context of product configuration. The approach builds on well-known concepts in the SPL arena such as feature models. The contributions of the paper include the CPC approach and the illustration of its application in a real-world product line.

Approach for Automated Product Modeling Using Knowledge-Based Design Features

Abstract: The globalization of the markets, increasing complexity and diversification of products as well as product and process innovations as central factors of business competition have forced companies to create new strategies of product development. This paper points out the possibility of standardization in the modeling phase in consideration of calculation results and conceptual design activities. The introduced approach is based on user defined features (UDFs) as knowledge carrier, whereas these UDFs have full control over the model setup, initialized by a few input parameters. In consideration of company specific model properties, the augmentation of UDFs with knowledge provides all information required regarding the shape, function and manufacturing of the product for all phases of the product life cycle. By means of an exemplary realization of the illustrated concept this paper makes the approach accessible to the reader. Finally the paper will be concluded with prospects in future challenges of ...

Optimal Product Portfolio Formulation by Merging Predictive Data Mining With Multilevel Optimization

Abstract: This paper addresses two important fundamental areas in product family formulation that have recently begun to receive great attention. First is the incorporation of market demand that we address through a data mining approach where realistic customer preference data are translated into performance design targets. Second is product architecture reconfiguration that we model as a dynamic design entity. The dynamic approach to product architecture optimization differs from conventional static approaches in that a product architecture is not fixed at the initial stage of product design, but rather evolves with fluctuations in customer performance preferences. The benefits of direct customer input in product family design will be realized through the cell phone product family example presented in this work. An optimal family of cell phones is created with modularity decisions made analytically at the engineering level that maximize company profit.

Tracking product specification dependencies in collaborative design for conflict management

Abstract: The main difficulty associated with a collaborative design process is understanding the product data exchanged during the design. Efficient and effective coordination of design activities relies on a thorough understanding of the dependencies between shared product specifications throughout the entire development cycle. This paper explores the linkages between the design process features and product specification dependencies, and suggests ways of identifying and managing specification dependencies to improve collaborative process performance. Using a UML (Unified Modeling Language) specification, we propose a process traceability tool to track the design process in an ongoing manner. Based on the information captured, the dependencies between specifications involved in the tracked process are identified and inserted in a dependency network, which is maintained throughout the design process. A set of mechanisms is then proposed to qualify the identified dependencies. Extracting and qualifying specification dependencies could be useful in many design situations; for example, during an engineering change management process to assess impacts and study change feasibility, or during a conflict management process to assist designers in resolving conflicts and maintaining the coherence of the design process (knowing that change management is a tool to conduct conflict management). Special attention is paid to the conflict management process. By means of a case study, we show how the solution we propose can assist designers during the conflict management process.

Managing product quality, risk, and resources through resource quality function deployment

Abstract: Decisions made in the early stages of product development projects are vital to their success. Such decisions include setting target product quality, allocating resources, as well as deciding whether to terminate or continue the project. In this study, we propose a new method that, based on a mathematical programming extension of quality function deployment, uses detailed information about the product and the organizational marketing and engineering competencies. The method outputs detailed information regarding project resource allocation, planned product quality, target market share, and resulting project risk that support the aforementioned decisions. The method is exemplified on the development of a recently patented product concept. While the product has never been developed, it is used to illustrate the proposed approach. The benefits and limitations of the method are discussed.