An integrated component design approach to the development of a design information system for customer-oriented product design

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Abstract

In product design, the designer must draw upon many different types of information including both product-user requirements and design developments in related fields. As each designer has his/her own subjective opinion, an appropriate link between the user requirements and design features must be carefully developed to generate the most suitable design recommendation.

The objective of this research is to develop a component design approach for the generation and evaluation of feasible design alternatives to help designers make the most effective design decisions. The development of the approach is based on the concept of component design and interaction links between user requirements and design output parameter values so that the design alternatives can be generated. A confidence interval for order statistics is then used to determine if enough unique feasible design alternatives have been generated. The research is presented in conjunction with a ballpoint pen design to demonstrate the feasibility and advantages of this approach.

The results should provide designers with a useful method for the development of a design information system that will efficiently generate and evaluate a set of feasible design alternatives in product design process.

Introduction

Product design is an integrated procedure involving transforming abstract design components into complete specification of the product’s characteristics to satisfy user requirements [1], [2], [3], [4]. In product design, two interdependent product characteristics are of critical importance, i.e., form and functions. The form specifies the appearance of a product, the product component patterns, materials, dimensions and surface finishes. The functions specify the user’s inputs and the relationships between these inputs to the output responses that determine the product’s structure [5], [6], [7], [8]. These are generally related to the expected tasks the product is expected to perform. As many manufacturing and assembly problems can be attributed to poor product design, many principles and approaches have been introduced to help designers solve complex design problems. Suh [9] identified design axioms based on the mapping process between functional requirements (FRs) and design parameters (DPs). Even though the FRs refer to design objectives and may not be derived from user requirements, the process of mapping from FRs to DPs is similar to the concept of customer-oriented design. In customer-oriented design, user requirements are transferred into a specific set of design parameters [10]. Since user requirements play a crucial role in product conceptualization, Chen et al. [11] suggested that designers consider the voice of multicultural customers as a source of input to derive the design specifications. The voice of customers can be transformed into design specifications in a matrix format that is called the “House of Quality” (HOQ), which is the first matrix of the quality function deployment (QFD) procedure [1], [2], [12]. QFD uses ranking and weighting techniques to translate customer-specified product attributes into engineering characteristics and provides designers with relative weights, such as technical difficulties, imputed importance, estimated costs and expected achievement as design recommendations [2], [3]. Prasad [13] further introduced a concept of concurrent function deployment (CFD) to consider functionality, performance, tools and technology, cost, responsiveness, and infrastructure in a workgroup-based engineering design process to deal with trade-off goals. Colombo et al. [14] then proposed an ontological approach to represent relationships between complex components and lead towards obtaining a final product that can meet initial design requirements.

Pahl and Beitz [1], and Cross [2] suggested, based on constraints or criteria derived from QFD, that the designer can apply a morphological chart method in the generation of design alternatives. Because a morphological chart method will generate a large number of design alternatives, the designer needs an evaluation procedure to choose a design recommendation. Pahl and Beitz [1] indicated that this evaluation could include a relative scale or weighing assessment for the technical safety, ergonomics and economic values. Cooper and Slagmulder [15] proposed a component-level target costing concept to determine the costs or prices for product components. The component-level target cost was determined by identifying the cost factors, such as component histories, functional analysis and productivity analysis. Asiedu and Gu [16] provided a life cycle cost analysis framework for specifying the estimated total incremental cost for a product design. Dewhurst and Boothroyd [17] proposed a cost estimation method based on an assumed optimum manufacturing method. This cost estimation method was used to estimate the total manufacturing cost. In general, cost is a particularly popular and useful performance measure [1], [15], [18]. Because cost estimation for product components is quite complicated, Cross [2] suggested that designers employ some means of differentially weighting objectives, so that the performances of design alternatives can be evaluated and compared across the whole set of objectives.

To help designers to efficiently deal with product design, the purpose of this research is to establish a component design approach for the generation and evaluation of feasible design alternatives. In the proposed component design approach, the designer identifies a set of marketed products and uses components and characteristics from existing systems to form new product design alternatives that satisfy the design constraints and meet user requirements. A ballpoint pen design was used as a case to illustrate the development of this approach.

Section snippets

Fundamentals of the component design approach in customer-oriented product design

Product design activity involves the creation of ideas based on the innovative imagination of a product designer. A rational product design process should assist the designer in assuring that the design fits the user and brings the user’s concerns into the decision-making process. The proposed component design approach concept is used to develop a customer-oriented product design procedure based on the user’s characteristics, which includes design input and output parameters, and their

Application of order statistics in determining numbers of feasible design alternatives

Let c1, c2,  , cn be the aggregate costs for a sample of n design alternatives that are generated for a specific set of user requirements with a probability mass function of f(c). Arrange these n design alternatives in an ascending cost order and the sequence will be c1,c2,,cn, where c1 is the smallest of (c1, c2,  , cn), and cn is the largest of (c1, c2,  , cn). In other words, c1<c2<<cn. Let C1 denote a random variable for the smallest aggregate cost c1,C1=min(c1,c2,,cn). According to

Development of a performance measure procedure for the evaluation of feasible design alternatives

As mentioned previously, product design is a creative activity. It is possible to generate a large number of feasible design alternatives for a specific set of user requirements. When a product designer or design team develops a product using either classical methods or computer technologies, evaluating a wide range of feasible design alternatives may require a considerable amount of time. This research applied order statistics in a component design approach to efficiently generate and evaluate

Development of a performance evaluation procedure for the generation of feasible design alternatives

The procedure for the generation of design alternatives develops candidate design alternatives CDAs by randomly choosing candidate design output parameter values that are identified from the YD array. The generated design alternative CDAs are then examined for feasibility based on the specific user requirements and the set of feasible design output parameter value combinations. An evaluation procedure is then employed to determine an aggregate performance measure value for each of the feasible

Illustration of the component design approach

The component design approach to the generation of feasible design alternatives develops feasible design alternatives by choosing candidate design output parameter values which are identified from the array of design output parameter values. The arrangement of the elements in DS and DSV might affect the quality of a sample of feasible design alternatives as determined by their performance measure values. This variation might then affect the quality of the design recommendation and perhaps

Conclusion

Product design is a complicated task that integrates knowledge and experience from designers of similar products to create more reliable and marketable products. When a designer or design team develops a product design using classical methods, the processes used in generating and evaluating alternative designs may require a considerable amount of time. The research presented in this paper describes an integrated performance measure procedure for generating and evaluating of feasible design

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the National Science Council, Taiwan, for supporting this research under Grant No. NSC85-2213-E006-016. Gratitude is also extended to the reviewers and the Editor for their valuable comments.

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