Daniele Regazzoni

PLM paradigm: How to lead BPR within the Product Development field

The design and implementation of a PLM solution in a cross-company environment is a complex and labour intensive operation, which is often coupled with a Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) project to better deploy technologies as well as methodologies and to target the system implementation on the real company needs. Enterprise Modelling (EM) languages are typically used to collect and share process knowledge among the BPR participants. Plenty of techniques are actually available at this scope and it is not always easy to understand how to select and use them in the different steps of re-engineering. The main purpose of this paper is to perform a qualitative analysis of three well known EM languages (IDEF, UML and ARIS) and to propose a new methodology, based on their integrated use, supporting BPR efforts in the Product Development domain.

Digital Human Models and Virtual Ergonomics to Improve Maintainability

Maintenance is one of the key drivers for future company success, due to the fact that these kinds of operations are strictly related to human labor cost, an expensive factor for western states. Furthermore, in the last decades, norms and laws on safety and ergonomics of the work place have taken importance among industrialized countries. Design for Maintenance is a design methodology that since early stages of product life cycle outlines needs and necessities of maintainers, in order to reduces time and cost; decreasing the complexity and the difficulties of these procedures and achieving a higher standard of workers’ health. In order to reach this goal, Digital Human Models (DHM) have been used to simulate assembly and maintenance processes. Virtual ergonomic analysis performed with a human model allows evaluating visibility, reachability and postures, stress and fatigue. The lack of methods supporting virtual ergonomics simulation has been addressed by proposing a systematic approach based on a step-by...

A full virtual approach to design and test lower limb prosthesis

Lower limb prostheses for above or below knee amputees are still designed and produced almost completely in a manual way, deeply relying on the experience and manual skills of orthopaedic technicians. This paper presents the main features characterising the prototype of a virtual environment developed to assist the technicians designing and testing the prosthesis. To reach the ambitious goal of replacing the manual process with a complete virtual one several issues have been considered and addressed: the capture and formalisation of process knowledge of orthopaedic technicians, the acquisition of patients information and digital data, the development of an integrated solution to design and test standard and custom-fit components and the simulation of the gait of a virtual human wearing the virtual prosthesis. The architecture of the prosthesis design platform as well as the modelling and simulation tools are described. Finally, the experimentation phase and related results are presented and discussed.

Integration of TRIZ problem solving tools in a product-service engineering process

The development of a new service proposed by Service Engineering relies largely on inspiration and past experiences of service designers. This article illustrates the viability of applying TRIZ, the theory of inventive problem solving, to service engineering proposing a new approach to traditional service design. By integrating TRIZ system modelling and problem-solving tools, the authors propose a new TRIZ-based approach to cover this weakness in service design. This integration has been evaluated by a theoretical study of the key concepts of both methods, and, practically, through the application to a real case study. The proposed integrated process shows the relevance of TRIZ for service design and its possible use as a support tool in the traditional service design.

Enhancement in Industrial PSS Design based on TRIZ: a Case Study

Despite the emergence in literature of novel contributions in the Product-Service Systems (PSS) Engineering, there is still a lack of systematic knowledge in this area. Most of the proposed methodologies are mere adaptation of traditional engineering approaches to the PSS domain. In this context, one of the most analysed methods is the theory of inventive problem solving (TRIZ). Purpose of this paper is to propose a way to use the Laws of Technical Systems Evolution (LTSE) and the Evolution Trends to predict what are the most likely improvements that can be made to a given PSS. A case study makes evidence of the potential behind the adoption of the LTSE.

Methodological enhancements for concept exploration in product design

The paper discloses a method for conceptual design oriented to generation of new product concepts based on in-depth knowledge and experience of systematic innovation methods and tools, but that does not require specific advanced skills to be performed. The method has been freely inspired by TRIZ Laws of Technical System Evolution (LTSE). It is structured as a sequence of practical guidelines and operative rules that guide designers through an unconventional paradigm leading to breakthrough ideas and new solutions. It has been checked through a set of test cases offered by local companies and performed by engineering students.

Towards Automatic Gait Assessment by Means of RGB-D Mocap

The present paper describes the research done to empirically validate the use of RGB-D cameras for orthopedic rehabilitation purposes. In order to assess the outcome of optical sensors a set of new generation inertial sensors have been adopted as well. Both kind of sensors have been used to track the same scene simultaneously in order to have comparable results. The aim of the work is provide evidence of performances of the newly introduced sensors (optical and inertial) and to automate acquisition and data elaboration in the medical field. The extraction of the only meaningful data from a gait, for instance, gives the change to perform an automatic preliminary analysis on normal people as well as on patients with known pathologies or disorders. In particular, this could allow determining without human intervention any standard disorders, according to literature classifications, eventually affecting the gait. The automatic procedure from acquisition to diagnosis constitutes a challenging topic of research and a success in terms of reliability, usability and physiological acceptance by technicians would radically impact medical practices in orthopedic rehabilitation centers.Copyright

A TRIZ-based approach to manage innovation and intellectual property

In this paper, we present a methodology and a working paradigm, based on TRIZ theory, specifically conceived for SMEs that are not able to face the problem of intellectual property management (IPM) in an autonomous way. As a first step, we introduce the competences and possible company structure to manage and protect intellectual property (IP) by means of patents and trademarks; then we describe the methodologies and the tools, which can be used for IPM, such as those derived from TRIZ. Finally, we describe a case study which refers to a typical example of know-how transfer from a technological leading sector to the large production of consumable products showing the use of considered TRIZ tools.

Additive Manufacturing to Advance Functional Design: An Application in the Medical Field

The improvement and the massive diffusion of Additive Manufacturing (AM) techniques have fostered the research of design methods to exploit at best the feature introduced by these solutions. The whole design paradigm needs to be changed taking into account new manufacturing capabilities. Additive manufacturing is not only an innovative method of fabrication, but it requires a new way to design products. Traditional practices of mechanical design are changing to exploit all potential of AM, new parameters and geometries could be realize avoiding technologies constrains of molding or machine tooling. The concept of “manufacturing for design” increasingly acquires greater importance and this means we have the chance to focus almost entirely on product functionality. The possibility to confer inhomogeneous properties to objects provides an important design key. We will study behavior and structure according to desired functions for each object identifying three main aspects to vary: infill type, external topology and shape, and material composition. In this research work we focus on FDM technology of 3D printing that easily allow to explore all previous conditions. We present a new way to conceive design process in order to confer variable properties to AM objects and some guidelines to control properties of deformation and elasticity using classic infills. The ultimate aim is to apply new design rules provided by AM in the prosthetic field of lower limb amputees. The socket of the prosthesis represents a deformable interface between the residual limb and the artificial leg that must be optimize according to geometry and loads distribution of patient. An application for a transfemoral patient will be discussed.

TRIZ-Based Patent Investigation by Evaluating Inventiveness

Among TRIZ users the importance given to patent resources is far behind the mere protection of R&D results. Patents represent a starting point for new inventions and a huge resource for collecting information on the way contradictions have been solved and in which different field such solutions may be adopted. Moreover the worldwide patent database contains information about the technology evolution that can be extracted so that the level of maturity of a product or process can be evaluated towards TRIZ laws of technical evolution. The contribution of this paper is to provide a step by step procedure, partially automatic, to perform TRIZ oriented patent search. The procedure, while determining the level of innovation of patents, allows defining a sharp set of patents responding to a structured query. The procedure has been applied to several case studies of different fields (e.g. mechanical, medical, and electronics) and a significant example referring to X-rays technology is shown in the paper.