Showing papers on "Product design specification published in 2015"

Cloud-Based Automated Design and Additive Manufacturing: A Usage Data-Enabled Paradigm Shift.

Abstract: Integration of sensors into various kinds of products and machines provides access to in-depth usage information as basis for product optimization. Presently, this large potential for more user-friendly and efficient products is not being realized because (a) sensor integration and thus usage information is not available on a large scale and (b) product optimization requires considerable efforts in terms of manpower and adaptation of production equipment. However, with the advent of cloud-based services and highly flexible additive manufacturing techniques, these obstacles are currently crumbling away at rapid pace. The present study explores the state of the art in gathering and evaluating product usage and life cycle data, additive manufacturing and sensor integration, automated design and cloud-based services in manufacturing. By joining and extrapolating development trends in these areas, it delimits the foundations of a manufacturing concept that will allow continuous and economically viable product optimization on a general, user group or individual user level. This projection is checked against three different application scenarios, each of which stresses different aspects of the underlying holistic concept. The following discussion identifies critical issues and research needs by adopting the relevant stakeholder perspectives.

Authenticating physical objects using machine learning from microscopic variations

Abstract: A method for classifying a microscopic image includes receiving a training dataset ( 306 ) including at least one microscopic image ( 305 ) from a physical object ( 303 ) and an associated class definition ( 304 ) for the image that is based on a product specification. Machine learning classifiers are trained to classify the image into classes ( 308 ). The microscopic image ( 305 ) is used as a test input for the classifiers to classify the image into one or more classes based on the product specification. The product specification includes a name of a brand, a product line, or other details on a label of the physical object.

Dexter: large-scale discovery and extraction of product specifications on the web

Abstract: The web is a rich resource of structured data. There has been an increasing interest in using web structured data for many applications such as data integration, web search and question answering. In this paper, we present Dexter, a system to find product sites on the web, and detect and extract product specifications from them. Since product specifications exist in multiple product sites, our focused crawler relies on search queries and backlinks to discover product sites. To perform the detection, and handle the high diversity of specifications in terms of content, size and format, our system uses supervised learning to classify HTML fragments (e.g., tables and lists) present in web pages as specifications or not. To perform large-scale extraction of the attribute-value pairs from the HTML fragments identified by the specification detector, Dexter adopts two lightweight strategies: a domain-independent and unsupervised wrapper method, which relies on the observation that these HTML fragments have very similar structure; and a combination of this strategy with a previous approach, which infers extraction patterns by annotations generated by automatic but noisy annotators. The results show that our crawler strategy to locate product specification pages is effective: (1) it discovered 1:46AM product specification pages from 3; 005 sites and 9 different categories; (2) the specification detector obtains high values of F-measure (close to 0:9) over a heterogeneous set of product specifications; and (3) our efficient wrapper methods for attribute-value extraction get very high values of precision (0.92) and recall (0.95) and obtain better results than a state-of-the-art, supervised rule-based wrapper.

Design modification supporting method based on product usage data in closed-loop PLM

Abstract: Thanks to recent technology related to product monitoring and data communication, it is now possible for a company to gather various kinds of product usage data during its operation in a ubiquitous way. However, the application of the newly gathered data is still vague and immature. If the data is transformed into appropriate information or knowledge, it would be possible to improve products through design modification, maintenance enhancement, elaborate end-of-life decision and so on. This article deals with the application of product usage data to support design modification. Design modification can be achieved by finding and fixing defective design parameters and affecting factors. This done by a complex procedure which is composed of several steps including diverse data processing technique such as function structure model, degradation scenario, function performance degradation evaluation, clustering and relation matrix. The proposed method assesses the status of working product, classifies the field data i.e. working environment/operation according to the status and identifies suspicious field data causing the poor working status. Then, the suspicious field data is correlated with design parameters; thus highly defective design parameters can be identified. For the product improvement, the defective design parameters should be reviewed and modified with a high priority. The proposed method is validated by a case study on a locomotive braking system. This work shows the possibility to transform product usage data into information for product improvement, which can serve as a guideline for product usage data application for other product improvement through product usage data.

A framework for optimising product performance through feedback and reuse of in-service experience

Abstract: Optimising performance of complex engineering artefacts, which are typically designed to have a useful life of several decades, becomes very difficult during in-service if lessons learnt are not used properly. The authors argue that performance of long-lived complex artefacts can be improved if adequate product in-service data is fed back to the early stages of the product life cycle. This paper discusses an inclusive life cycle approach to optimising product performance by using knowledge and experience gained during in-service. The problem is presented alongside a review of literature of relevant subject areas. A framework for in-service knowledge management is then presented and operationalised through an industrial case study. The framework is developed from the point of view of an integrated product and service provider. The findings from the case study demonstrate how in-service knowledge can be captured, fed back and reused for the design and manufacture stages of the product lifecycle. This enables designers to learn from in-service product performance by informing subsequent designs with in-service knowledge, and consequently improving the through-life product performance. Development of a framework for knowledge management and in-service data feedback to product development.Demonstrating how field data is captured, fed back and reused for product development.The shift of OEM product development paradigms from traditional linear steps to more integrated product and service business models was discussed.The key in-service information OEMs require from in-service for new product development were identified.

Product Design for Manufacturing and Assembly

Abstract: Major changes in product design practices are occurring in all phases of the new product development process. These changes will have a significant impact on how all products are designed and the development of the related manufacturing processes over the next decade. The obvious goal of any new product development process is to turn a profit by converting raw material into finished products. Designing for manufacturing and assembly (DFM&A) is a technique for reducing the cost of a product by breaking the product down into its simplest components. All members of the design team can understand the product's assembly sequence and material flow early in the design process. The most beneficial outcome of DFM&A is to reduce part count in the assembly, which in turn will simplify the assembly process, lower manufacturing overhead, reduce assembly time, and increase quality by lessening the opportunities for introducing a defect. Keywords: designing for manufacturing and assembly (DFMA new product development; product design

How automotive engineering is taking product line engineering to the extreme

Abstract: Automotive manufacturing ranks among the most extreme instances of systems and software product line engineering (PLE). The product family numbers in the millions, each product is highly complex in its own right, and the variation across products is literally astronomical in scale. This paper explores the aspects that make the domain extreme and the very specific implications they have for PLE. These implications include the need for efficient manufacturing, complexity management, concurrent development streams, globally distributed engineering and production, a hierarchical product family tree, multi-level variation binding, constraint management, and a highly robust and integrated PLE tooling environment. Happily, the PLE paradigm supporting these implications brings about a number of opportunities for analysis and automation that provide efficiencies of production previously unattainable. We focus on one example in depth: The management and automated generation of the many thousands of calibration parameters that determine vehicle-specific software behavior. Throughout, we use the vehicle product line at General Motors, which we believe to be the world's largest, to illustrate and ground our journey through automotive PLE.

Principles for designing products with flexibility for future evolution

Abstract: Product flexibility is defined as the capability of a product to be redesigned quickly and economically into subsequent product offerings. In this paper, a comprehensive set of design guidelines is created for product flexibility by merging the results of two research studies - a directed patent study of notably flexible products and an empirical product study of consumer products analysed with a product flexibility metric. The guidelines are organised in categories that describe how and under what circumstances they increase flexibility for future evolution. The guidelines are critically evaluated by comparing them to existing literature on closely related topics, including product platforms and mass customisation. Two examples are provided to illustrate how the use of the guidelines can improve a product's flexibility for future evolution.

Product configuration in construction

Abstract: Construction is traditionally a trade that produces unique, one-off products designed specifically for individual projects via an engineer-to-order process. However, recently developed flexible product platforms based on the theory of mass customisation offer product flexibility with affordable costs. The degree of commonality between products can also be increased by applying the products-in-products concept. This study aims to conceptualise and test theories of mass customisation through modularisation for applications in the construction industry. Three case studies on building and infrastructure construction projects using different specification processes (modify-to-order, configure-to-order and select-variant) are presented. The results show that the products-in-products concept is useful for enabling mass customisation in construction. While select-variant specification is compatible with relatively integral designs, the architecture must have a modular structure to enable modify-to-order or configure-to-order customisation.

Improving new product development in the fashion industry through product lifecycle management: a descriptive analysis

Abstract: New product development represents a core process within the fashion industry: it is a knowledge-intensive set of tasks that needs to be improved in order to enhance a company's competitive advantage. In this context, through product lifecycle management (PLM) product data are shared amongst the various actors and processes in the different phases of the product lifecycle. A descriptive exploratory research allows the authors to recognise the importance of PLM in the fashion industry, after an in-depth analysis of the existing literature. PLM includes modules supporting many industry-specific processes, reducing time-to-market, lead times and inventory. It is not just a product centric lifecycle-oriented business model, but it also represents a strategic approach that is spreading in the recent years also in a complex industry, as that of fashion.

Incrementally Synthesizing Controllers from Scenario-Based Product Line Specifications.

Abstract: Many software-intensive systems consist of components that interact to fulfill complex functionality. Moreover, often many variants of such systems have to be designed at once. This adds complexity to the design task. Recently, we proposed a scenario-based approach to design product lines, which combines feature diagrams and Modal Sequence Diagrams. We proposed a consistency-checking technique based on a dedicated product line model checker. One limitation of this technique is that it is incomplete, i.e., it may fail to show the consistency of some consistent specifications. In this paper we propose a new game-based approach that overcomes this incompleteness and, in addition, automatically synthesizes controllers for the consistent product specifications. We exploit the fact that many variants are similar and efficiently synthesize product controllers incrementally. We provide a prototype tool and evaluate the efficiency of the approach.

Enhanced Product Lifecycle Information Management using communicating materials

Abstract: With traditional PLM (Product Lifecycle Management), people think toward the future: first comes product development, then manufacturing, then support and finally disposal - data flows only in the forward direction. With the CL 2 M (Closed-Loop Lifecycle Management) concept, there are also flows going backward, enabling better visibility and control of the product throughout its PLC (Product Life Cycle). CL 2 M uses "intelligent products" to gather information at any instant of the PLC and to make it available on downstream or upstream PLC phases. However, the information is often deported on a database and is accessed remotely via a network pointer carried by the product. To bring the CL 2 M concept a step further, this paper addresses a dual challenge: (i) providing a new kind of intelligent material capable of undergoing physical transformations without losing its communication ability and the data that is stored on it, (ii) providing a framework to achieve a high degree of data synchronization (i.e. enabling data updates on the product, regardless of the network availability). An applicative scenario is presented, showing how this kind of material is put into practice in the context of "communicating medical garments" and how the requirements of the desired degree of data synchronization can be reached. A system for an enhanced Product LifeCycle Information Management (PLIM) is proposed.A dual challenge is addressed: providing a new intelligent material & a high degree of data synchronization.These challenges are addressed with the combination of CL 2 M and "communicating materials".A scenario using "medical garments" shows how the desired degree of data synchronization is reached.Research perspectives on data synchronization regarding existing standards are introduced.

Retrieval of Relevant Opinion Sentences for New Products

Abstract: With the rapid development of Internet and E-commerce, abundant product reviews have been written by consumers who bought the products. These reviews are very useful for consumers to optimize their purchasing decisions. However, since the reviews are all written by consumers who have bought and used a product, there are generally very few or even no reviews available for a new product or an unpopular product. We study the novel problem of retrieving relevant opinion sentences from the reviews of other products using specifications of a new or unpopular product as query. Our key idea is to leverage product specifications to assess product similarity between the query product and other products and extract relevant opinion sentences from the similar products where a consumer may find useful discussions. Then, we provide ranked opinion sentences for the query product that has no user-generated reviews. We first propose a popular summarization method and its modified version to solve the problem. Then, we propose our novel probabilistic methods. Experiment results show that the proposed methods can effectively retrieve useful opinion sentences for products that have no reviews.

Development of a paper-bag-folding machine using open architecture for adaptability

Abstract: Open architecture provides a sustainable product framework for mass personalised production. Applying personalised modules and common interfaces, an open-architecture product can satisfy changes in the user requirements of an application. Planning product modules for the open-architecture product structure using the existing method is challenging. The quality function deployment is extended in this study to decide the open-architecture product module types. The customer requirements are divided into two parts: basic function needs and changes of the individual customer needs. Based on the axiomatic design, the functional requirements are mapped into design parameters to establish the design matrix. A degree of variety is proposed as a quantitative measure for the component variability of product modules. According to the relationship of components and degree of variety, the product components are clustered into open-architecture product modules. The proposed method is used to design a paper-bag-folding ma...

Model-based Product Line Engineering - enabling product families with variants

Abstract: Product Lines are a group of related products manufactured or produced within or between collaborating organizations. To effectively manage a product line, one needs to understand both the similarities and differences between the different products and optimize the development lifecycle to leverage the similarities, and concentrate development on the differences. ISO 26550:2013 Software & Systems Engineering - Reference Model for Product Line Management & Engineering provides a standard for defining these similarities and differences as well as the choices between them. Model-Based Systems and Software Engineering (MBSE) using the Systems Modeling Language (SysML) and the Unified Modeling Language (UML) provide a means of modeling systems and software. Bringing the two together allows users to model product lines in industry standard formats. Combining these with an execution engine means that product models can be created for specific products, whilst maintaining the original product line model. This provides significant ROI for aerospace companies.