Variety management is a cross-domain issue in product family design. In the real field, the relationships across the domains are so complex for most of the existing product families that they cannot be easily identified without proper reference architecture. This reference architecture should provide the cross- domain mapping mechanisms in an explicit manner and be able to identify the proper units for management. From this perspective of cross-domain framework, this paper introduces development architecture (DA) to describe the relationships between elements in market, design, and production domains and to give insights for the cross-domain variety management in the product development stage. DA has three parts: (1) the arrangement of elements in each domain, (2) the mapping between elements, and (3) the identification of management sets and key interfaces which are the proper units for variety management. The proposed development architecture framework is applied to the case of front chassis family of modules of an automobile.

Sketch2Prototype is an AI-based framework that transforms a hand-drawn sketch into a diverse set of 2D images and 3D prototypes through sketch-to-text, text-to-image, and image-to-3D stages. This framework, shown across various sketches, rapidly generates text, image, and 3D modalities for enhanced early-stage design exploration. We show that using text as an intermediate modality outperforms direct sketch-to-3D baselines for generating diverse and manufacturable 3D models. We find limitations in current image-to-3D techniques, while noting the value of the text modality for user-feedback.

Product-service/systems (PSS) have been projected to be a potential solution to address overconsumption and to enable an enhanced sustainability performance. However, PSS do not always live up to their potential benefits, due to unintended changes in consumer behaviour. This study aims at investigating existing methods and tools to develop sustainable behaviour within PSS, alongside potential barriers and success factors. Based on a systematic literature review, a total of 46 methods to achieve sustainable behaviour were collected and analysed, and further discussed on the basis of the identified success factors and barriers.

The aim of our study was to use Kansei Engineering Evaluation to examine the renewal of old buildings with sustainability and innovation by comparing to new buildings. First, we conducted a questionnaire survey, with 84 participants, on 18 buildings from Asian and European countries; the survey used 16 adjectives. Second, we studied the characteristics of new and renewed old buildings in terms of the elements crucial to sustainable and innovative design. The results suggest that the adaptive reuse of old buildings in more sustainable than constructing new buildings. Further, the adjectives preferred by the survey show that the adaptive reuse of old buildings has higher influence with character of “creative” from the innovation viewpoint. This paper presents a project to address sustainability and innovation of adaptive reused of old building at a later stage. This study contributes to the renewal of existing infrastructure to improve its longevity and chance of future reuse, and to ensure environmental sustainability for future society.

Today we live a high increasing digitalization in industry 4.0. As part of the evolution of CAD solutions on the market, there is a particular interest in new generation software which are distributed as Software-as-a- Service (SaaS) such as Onshape, 3D Experience, Fusion 360, etc. In order to prepare engineering students for integrating such software within the Université de Technologie de Compiègne (UTC), a further practicing study is carried out in this paper. This study aims to identify, analyze, experiment, evaluate and compare the capacities of Cloud-based CAD solutions on the market and in scientific research work in order to define potential benefits for their implementation in mechanical engineering education. Therefore, we tested two use scenarios of the two Cloud-based software; Onshape and Fusion 360 on a case study. Then, we discussed the comparison results.

To design interactive behaviours for their products designers/makers have to use high fidelity tools like ‘electronic prototyping kits’, involving sensors and programming to incorporate interactions in their products and are dependent on availability of hardware. Not every designer is comfortable using such tools to ideate and test their concept ideas, eventually slowing them down in the process. Thus, there is a need for a design tool that reduces dependence on complex components of such tools while exploring new concepts for product design at an early stage. In this work, we propose a Mixed Reality system that we developed to simulate interactive behaviours of products using designed visual interaction blocks. The system is implemented in three stages: idea generation, creating interactions and revision of interactive behaviours. The implemented virtual scenario showed to elicit high motivation and appeal among users resulting in inventive and creative design experience at the same time. As a result, designers will be able to create and revise their interaction-behavioural design concepts virtually with relative ease, resulting in higher concept generation and their validation.

As digitalisation progresses, the demands placed on companies are increasing at all stages of the product generation process. In order to address these requirements and maintain economic strength, companies must implement innovative and intelligent technologies. Small and medium-sized enterprises in particular are confronted with various obstacles, the overcoming of which is addressed by the “Potential Model” presented in this publication.

When using additive manufacturing processes, the choice of the numerous settings for the process and design parameters significantly influences the build and production time. To reduce the required build time, it is useful to adapt the parameters with the greatest influence. However, since the contribution of the individual parameters is not readily apparent, a sensible choice of process and design parameters can become a challenging task.

Thus, the following article presents a method, that enables the product developer to determine the main contributors to the required build time of additively manufactured products. By using this sensitivity analysis method, the contributors of the individual parameters can be analyzed for a given parametrized CAD model with the help of an analysis-based build time estimation approach. The novelty of the contribution can be found in providing a method that allows studying both design and process parameters simultaneously, taking the machine to be used into account. The exemplary application of the presented method to a sample part manufactured by Fused Deposition Modeling demonstrates its benefits and applicability.

Geometrical work piece deviations are unavoidable and directly affect the function and quality of technological products. Tolerance management is regarded as a crucial subtask of the development of technological products, because it ensures the function as well as a sufficient product quality while maintaining reasonable production costs. That means, that geometric tolerances as an essential part of the product description greatly affect the functional capability, manufacturability, mountability, verifiability and the costs of the final product. The research group FOR 2271 was founded to enable the computer-aided specification of tolerances, which meet the requirements of production, assembly, verification and function by close cooperation between the departments responsible for product design, assembly and metrology. The aim of this contribution is to determine the manufacturing process scatter as well as the measurement uncertainty and establish ways and means to include that information into efficient meta-models, ultimately enabling improved and accurate tolerance analyses.

Although Life Cycle Sustainability Assessments (LCSA) are important in evaluating the sustainability of complex products and services, there is no sufficient support for engineers performing LCSA. The concept of an Engineering Graph focuses on the relations of data within engineering. It provides a model that leverages existing data in engineering and extendibility to include specialized databases and open and public data from the semantic web. This paper proposes a concept of how Engineering Graphs can be used to address the issues of LCSA and support engineers.

The integration of Sensing Machine Elements (SME) is a promising approach to obtain reliable data about relevant process and state variables of technical systems. However, the quality and reliability of the provided data strongly depends on the corresponding calculation model of the SME and the therein included uncertainty. Consequently, in this contribution, the calculation model of a sensory utilized rolling bearing, as exemplary SME, is systematically analyzed using existing methods and tools to identify uncertainty that critically affects the quality and reliability of the data provided.

When using product-service systems as a business model, new product development challenges and opportunities arise. Due to the possibility of customizing the product fleet depending on the user-scenarios, more product variants are possible and often necessary. Therefore, this paper presents an approach for the automated functionality and design optimization for user scenario specific use cases. The approach combines an optimization framework with a functional simulation model and a generative design approach CAD model. This results in a robust and simultaneously flexible design environment.

The goal in system-level design is to generate a diverse set of high-performing design configurations that allow trade-offs across different objectives and avoid early concretization. We use deep generative models to learn a manifold of the valid design space, followed by Monte Carlo sampling to explore and optimize design over the learned manifold, producing a diverse set of optimal designs. We demonstrate the efficacy of our proposed approach on the design of an SAE race vehicle and propeller.

Polygon meshes and particularly triangulated meshes can be used to describe the shape of different types of geometry such as bicycles, bridges, or runways. In engineering, such polygon meshes can occur as finite element meshes, resulting from topology optimization or laser scanning. This article presents an automated parameterization of polygon meshes into a parametric representation using subdivision surfaces, especially in topology optimization. Therefore, we perform surface skeletonization on a volumetric grid supported by the Euclidian distance transformation and topology preserving and shape-preserving criterion. Based on that surface skeleton, an automated conversation into a Subdivision Surface Control grid is established. The final mid-surface-like parametrization is quite flexible and can be changed by variating the control gird or the local thickness.

The high interaction between process and product models in product development and systems engineering (SE) is common sense. However, most research in the field of model based systems engineering (MBSE) focusses of physical systems (hardware and software). The authors claim that this focus is a main reason for the low acceptance and high effort for implementation of SE and MBSE in industrial practice. Thus, this contribution aims at supporting an integrative analysis and synthesis of process and product models by introducing the concept and framework of Model-based Process Engineering. Based on established research this framework introduces three main systems, namely the system of processes, system of product models, and system of tools to describe complex product development. The main contribution of this work is a preliminary concept to structure and link the systems of processes and product models. Besides form the description of the main relations between the systems an integrated modelling concept to represent links between the process and product model system is proposed.

Throughout the course of product experience, a user employs multiple senses, including vision, hearing, and touch. Previous cross-modal studies have shown that multiple senses interact with each other and change perceptions. In this paper, we propose a methodology for designing multisensory product experiences by applying cross-modal effect to simultaneous stimuli. In this methodology, we first obtain a model of the comprehensive cognitive structure of user's multisensory experience by applying Kansei modeling methodology and extract opportunities of cross-modal effect from the structure. Second, we conduct experiments on these cross-modal effects and formulate them by obtaining a regression curve through analysis. Finally, we find solutions to improve the product sensory experience from the regression model of the target cross-modal effects. We demonstrated the validity of the methodology with SLR cameras as a case study, which is a typical product with multisensory perceptions.

The aim of this paper is to examine the current state of research on tolerance-induced costs in Germany. Through a literature research already existing approaches for the determination of costs related to tolerances during the specification of technical components are pointed out and possible approaches for the reduction of these costs are presented. In addition, the actuality of these approaches will be considered. One question that is supposed to be answered here is to what state of standard for the specification of components these approaches can be assigned to. On the other hand, it should be clarified whether the existing approaches are applicable to the currently valid standard system of the Geometrical Product Specification (GPS).

Can the economic efficiency of the specifications selected for tolerancing be determined in a technical drawing during the product development process in accordance with GPS on the basis of the current state of research?

Understanding and applying consumers' needs in product development is key to success across various industries. The failure rate of new products, however, remains high because consumer demands are not adequately addressed. To investigate the role of consumers in the product development processes of small ventures, we conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews of 40 packaged food and beverage small ventures in California and Finland. Our findings showed that consumers rarely drove the design of new products, but rather functioned as a source of validation or feedback for small improvements of existing products. Consumer feedback was often unstructured and concentrated in the latter stages of the product development process. However, even though customer involvement in the small ventures' product development was more restricted than recommended in cocreation literature their influence still brought meaningful changes to the products. Given the small ventures' lack of resources, future research on creative, low-cost ways to co-create is called for.

The use of product-service systems business models is increasing in today's economy. Because the products that provide the service to the customers incur cost during their lifetime, the method of lifecycle costing finds wide-spread use. However, this paper shows the current methods have some inaccuracies when determining lifecycle costs. The methods do not consider the required number of products necessary to provide the offered service to the customers. This paper describes a new framework for lifecycle costing that includes these cost components.

To implement circular economy, manufacturers will need to develop new business models. Available approaches are granular, generic, infrequently focusing on advice or implementation, and lacking practical demonstration. This article presents how a tool was proposed to cover these gaps. Based on design research methodology, twenty-two conceptual and practical requirements were identified and translated in functions for the development of the Circular Economy Business Model Configurator, a tool that supports manufacturers in strengthening proposals of business models for circular economy.