Showing papers on "Product design specification published in 2022"

A bilevel-optimization approach to determine product specifications during the early phases of product development: Increase customer value and reduce design risks

Abstract: It is crucial to define product specifications (a series of engineering characteristics and their corresponding values) reasonably and scientifically in the early phases of product development. The product specifications should consider multiple decision-making factors (external situations, internal situations, laws and regulations, and other product lifecycle requirements), which requires several cycles of iterations, tradeoffs, and modifications. During this decision-making process, two key challenges must be overcome. The first is how to organize all of the related factors in a manner that adequately assists, clarifies, and expresses the iterative decision-making process. The second is how to abstract this decision-making problem with iterations and tradeoffs into an approximate optimization model. To overcome these two challenges, a bilevel-optimization approach to determine product specifications during the product planning and concept design phases is proposed. First, an iterative decision-making process, which includes customer value-driven product planning based on quality function deployment, design risk-reducing concept design using cost-based concept failure mode effects analysis, and the interactions between the product planning and concept design phases, is constructed to solve the first challenge. Second, a bilevel-optimization model is proposed to determine the best product specifications and product concepts, which clarifies how the tradeoffs between these two phases are reached, solving the second challenge. Subsequently, a case study of developing an integrated washer and dryer machine is used to explain and prove the validity of the proposed bilevel-optimization approach.

A bilevel-optimization approach to determine product specifications during the early phases of product development: Increase customer value and reduce design risks

Abstract: It is crucial to define product specifications (a series of engineering characteristics and their corresponding values) reasonably and scientifically in the early phases of product development. The product specifications should consider multiple decision-making factors (external situations, internal situations, laws and regulations, and other product lifecycle requirements), which requires several cycles of iterations, tradeoffs, and modifications. During this decision-making process, two key challenges must be overcome. The first is how to organize all of the related factors in a manner that adequately assists, clarifies, and expresses the iterative decision-making process. The second is how to abstract this decision-making problem with iterations and tradeoffs into an approximate optimization model. To overcome these two challenges, a bilevel-optimization approach to determine product specifications during the product planning and concept design phases is proposed. First, an iterative decision-making process, which includes customer value-driven product planning based on quality function deployment, design risk-reducing concept design using cost-based concept failure mode effects analysis, and the interactions between the product planning and concept design phases, is constructed to solve the first challenge. Second, a bilevel-optimization model is proposed to determine the best product specifications and product concepts, which clarifies how the tradeoffs between these two phases are reached, solving the second challenge. Subsequently, a case study of developing an integrated washer and dryer machine is used to explain and prove the validity of the proposed bilevel-optimization approach.

Bridging the Semantic Gap Between Customer Needs and Design Specifications Using User-Generated Content

Abstract: Although product design has been considered as a collaborative activity, progress in developing methods to facilitate the design process has been hampered by difficulties in building common bases among various stakeholders. Customers may only have general needs of the product in layman's terms instead of the sufficient domain knowledge to identify the product specifications. Thus, there is a great need in design research to translate the expressed needs in natural language to design specifications and bridge this semantic gap. By leveraging the massive amount of online user-generated content, we develop a deep learning-based method to automatically identify product design parameters or product specifications. Specifically, we crawl product review data and the corresponding product metadata from e-commerce websites. A convolutional neural network based solution is provided to map product reviews to product specifications. Experimental results show that the method can be well adapted to the mapping from customer needs in the natural language to product specifications. The method facilitates product design by addressing the semantic gap between general customer needs and detailed product specifications. In addition, the automated mapping greatly improves the efficiency and reduces labor in the design process.

Product evolution analysis for design adaptation using big sales data

Abstract: Products are constantly evolving through design adaptations to satisfy market requirements. Efficient design adaptation via maximal reusing of existing design can improve product quality, reduce manufacturing cost, and time to market. Understanding of product evolution mechanism is required for design adaptations through rationalized modularity and interfaces. Emerging big sales data provide rich resources for product evolution analysis. To support efficient design adaptations, a framework and associated methods are developed in this work using big sales data for product evolution analysis. Reproduction, mutation, and crossover of product specifications are introduced as specification adaptation operations. Methods are proposed for identification of specification adaptations and estimation of the adaptation probability. Based on modeling and analyzing relationships among product specifications and components, different types of modules and interfaces are proposed through components clustering and their potential operation (mutation, reproduction, and crossover) probabilities. Design recommendations of adaptable product architecture with modules and interfaces are made for facilitating design adaptations. A case study of consumer Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UVAs) illustrates the proposed method. Limitations and potential extensions of the newly developed method are discussed. Further investigations of the product evolution mechanism using game theory to support competitive product development are included.

Extraction of Product Specifications from the Web - Going Beyond Tables and Lists

Abstract: E-commerce product pages on the web often present product specification data in structured tabular blocks. Extraction of these product attribute-value specifications has benefited applications like product catalogue curation, search, question answering, and others. However, across different Websites, there is a wide variety of HTML elements (like , , , , etc.) typically used to render these blocks that makes their automatic extraction a challenge. Most of the current research has focused on extracting product specifications from tables and lists and, therefore, suffers from recall when applied to a large-scale extraction setting. In this paper, we present a product specification extraction approach that goes beyond tables or lists and generalizes across the diverse HTML elements used for rendering specification blocks. Using a combination of hand-coded features and deep learned spatial and token features, we first identify the specification blocks on a product page. We then extract the product attribute-value pairs from these blocks following an approach inspired by wrapper induction. We created a labeled dataset of product specifications extracted from 14,111 diverse specification blocks taken from a range of different product websites. Our experiments show the efficacy of our approach compared to the current specification extraction models and support our claim about its application to large-scale product specification extraction.,

A methodology for Product redesign and design refresh

Abstract: : Product designers seek to solve real problems for beneficiaries and users of their products using empathy, knowledge of potential customers' habits and behaviors, what hinders their use of products or what attracts them to them, as well as their needs and desires. Good product design practices stick to the product throughout the entire product life cycle. Product design is essential in creating the initial user experience and product presentation, from user research to concept development to prototyping and usability testing. But these practices do not end there, as product design plays an ongoing role in improving the customer experience and ensuring the addition of complementary functions and capabilities in a seamless and discoverable manner. Brand consistency and development remain a primary responsibility for product design until the end of the product's life. Each designer knows that he must constantly monitor his product and re-design it if necessary. Product design refresh means making visual or appearance changes that affect the appearance of the product while not changing the main ergonomic or functional elements of the product or the user experience structure. As for the re-design, the change is radical, beyond re-designing the visual and formal elements of the product or the so-called appearance of the product. The redesign is often aimed at simplifying the user experience, adding new features or functionality, and includes major changes to the product's structure and functionality and improving its ergonomics. Redesign usually involves significant changes in product packaging that result from changes in its shape and size . Research problem : The line between a design refresh and redesign is often blurred when the goal of an appearance update evolves into more massive and more impactful changes. If the changes made by the designer affect the look, function and functionality of the product then this will undoubtedly be considered a kind of re-design. The solution may be to clarify the differences between both processes in their objectives, results, and even procedures for each of them. The research question can be summarized in: How can designers benefit from updating and re-designing in reformulating products and building them in design and practicality by benefiting from the user experience? Research objectives: Preparing an applied methodology that takes into account the difference between re-design and design refresh in product design to achieve the best return in the product design process, as well as benefit from the review and analysis of user experience in a comprehensive and accurate way to find appropriate design procedures. Research Methodology: The study uses the inductive approach. The induction process in this study is based on the process of deriving a design methodology from multiple observations and readings and follow-up of designers while performing their work tasks. The importance of the research: This study worked to provide a logical scientific approach to the re-design process, which greatly benefits designers and design students, as there is no known design process for re-design, and designers often have to use traditional design processes despite the different purpose of the design and re-design processes design or update the design.

Using Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) Software to Teach the Product Development Process: Developing Industry-Ready Graduates

Abstract: The apparel industry has undergone massive technological advancements over the last decade. Technological advancements have impacted every step of product development and altered the skills necessary to work within the apparel industry. To address the new skills needed for industry, a cloud-based product lifecycle management (PLM) software was integrated into a senior-level design and product development course focusing on the technical design process. Student learning of the PLM system was addressed from not only acquiring functional skills but also increasing critical thinking capacity through a holistic product development approach. Overall, students showed growth in understanding the product development process, communicating product specifications, and considering the different aspects of effectively developing a producible product. Teaching a PLM software through functional skills and project-based approaches will not only prepare students for the industry; it will make them more effective designers and product developers.

Closed-Loop Engineering Approach for Data-Driven Product Planning

Abstract: Abstract This contribution introduces an approach for data-driven optimization of products and their product generations through a Closed-Loop Engineering approach resulting from the German research project DizRuPt. The approach focuses on data-driven product planning by ensuring data consistency and traceability between product planning, product development, and product operation by combining aspects and functions from Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and the Internet of Things (IoT). The presented approach is illustrated and validated by pilot applications from the research project.

A Product Design Path Decision Method for Multi-Source Design Requirements

Abstract: —As two design paths to meet the design needs, product change and product innovation adopt different technical methods and implementation characteristics. After the product design demand is put forward, if the product design path cannot be reasonably selected according to the demand characteristics, but blindly implement a certain path, it may affect the product design quality and produce additional production and manufacturing costs. This paper puts forward the method of product demand-oriented design. Firstly, according to the characteristics of design information domain in product design information association model, multi-source product design requirements are divided into functional requirements, structural requirements and parameter requirements, and the adaptability evaluation method of products to three types of requirements is proposed. Finally, a product design path decision method based on the evaluation results of three types of demand adaptability is proposed. As the evaluation standard of whether the product change can be implemented, this method can quickly enter the product design implementation stage, so as to speed up the response speed of enterprise demand and reduce the waste of unnecessary design resources.