Hitoshi Komoto

A framework for computer-aided conceptual design and its application to system architecting of mechatronics products

Conceptual design of modern products has become complex due to an increasing number of subsystems and components comprising the system and the multi-disciplinarity of the employed design knowledge. The paper proposes a product modeling framework and a CAD system for conceptual design of complex products focusing on hierarchical system decomposition and consistency management of design information across different engineering disciplines. The framework and CAD system support these tasks with concurrent development of functional and parameter-level product descriptions and comprehensive evaluation of these descriptions from functional, parameter-level, structural, and behavioral aspects. A conceptual design case at a printer manufacturer is demonstrated.

A simulation method of dynamic systems applied to backcasting scenario design

Companies and governments use scenarios as a means to express their long-term development plans from diverse, business, social, environmental, and technological aspects with various resolutions. In designing such scenarios, simulation methods are crucial in verifying scenario conclusions derived from facts and activities. This paper proposes a simulation method used in the scenario design process, which can deal with a scenario model with various resolutions by combining simulation methods studied on system dynamics and agent-based modeling. The method quantifies the side effects of target conclusions in backcasting design of a scenario towards sustainable society based on the IPAT formalization.

Reuse/sharing business design method considering the difficulties for product transfer

The objective of this study is to propose a reuse/sharing business design method especially focusing on the two different factors: the benefit obtained by component (or product) reuse (or sharing) and its resulting cost. To this end, we first propose a calculation model of the benefit of and costs for the component reuse/sharing considering the necessary transportation and component installation/uninstallation tasks. Then, we propose a reuse/sharing design method that screens out a profitable set of components in addition with the groups of the users among which each corresponding component is to be reused or shared. A simplified calculation example is also provided to illustrate the method.

The Potential of Additive Manufacturing Technology for Realizing a Sustainable Society

Today, additive manufacturing (AM), which refers to a process by which digital design data is used to build up artifacts by decomposing material, is gaining growing interest from industry. The AM’s capability for producing complex structure in extremely small lot size can enable more optimal design for today’s manufacturing products. Through such optimal design of each product, energy and material consumption of society can be significantly reduced. As AM can produce a wide variety of components in one-by-one production, the total number of the products (and components) can be significantly reduced. In addition, the products made by AM can be optimally designed and manufactured for each particular purpose. This implies these products have no unused functions that may consume additional energy and materials. The objective of the paper is to propose the method for evaluating AM’s potential for reducing environmental impact of society considering these factors caused by introducing AM technology into industry.

Architecture-Centric Design Approach for Multidisciplinary Product Development

Managing complexity is a crucial task during the development process of multidisciplinary complex products. To achieve an efficient and effective development process of such a product, all the stakeholders must maintain a common understanding of the system and mutually linked detailed information of the product. This chapter proposes system architecture as a concept wider than product architecture, which provides such an overview as well as information that links various detailed information about the product. System architecture includes not only structural elements and relations among them but also functions, behaviors represented by working principles, and a variety of requirements. The working principles are modeled with physical phenomena and the involved parameters and relations among those parameters (e.g., equations). This chapter presents three prototype tools for system architecting illustrated with examples.

Service Shares for Microfactory to Ensure Industrial Product-Service Systems

Industrial Product-Service Systems (IPS²) are promising approaches to realize different customer requirements. The built-up Microfactory is a result of a cooperation of Japanese research institutes and will be focused in this paper. The paper identifies two categories of relevant service shares for the Microfactory. The general service shares for Microfactory cover basic requirements. These distinguish general service shares form complex service shares to fulfill customer specific requirements. Examples for both categories of service shares for Microfactory, are presented. Finally different scenarios can be described under consideration of specific selection of general and complex service shares to fulfill customer requirements.

A Computational Support for Abduction in Product-Service Systems Design

Design of services at the use stage of products is crucial for the manufacturing industry to increase value delivery to product users through the life cycle. The paper proposes an approach to computational hypothesis formation regarding these services to meet given goals and quality criteria as specifications. The hypothesis formation procedure, which consists of analysis, suggestion, and transformation of service-related business models, represents the reasoning of designers by abduction, and implemented on a service CAD tool. The representation of a business model suitable to support the procedure is proposed and it is compared with related work about service modeling.

System Design of Maintenance Service for Distributed Production Facilities

Maintenance is fundamental service for the manufacturing industry to increase the performance of production facilities from both economic and environmental perspectives. This paper proposes a simulation-based method that supports maintenance service design of distributed production facilities from a system-level perspective. The simulation result shows relations between the productivity of distributed facilities and total maintenance service cost considering system constraints such as the availability of maintenance engineers. The paper shows how the simulation model is developed on a Service CAD integrated with a life cycle simulator.

Life Cycle Cost Estimation using a Modeling Tool for the Design of Control Systems

Life cycle design requires a good design method to achieve less environmental impacts and life cycle costs. This paper introduces a theory of product life cycle dynamics in analogy of control theory. The paper presents a life cycle model described with a block diagram, which is the standard representation of control systems. The model can simulate the life cycle costs in a market, where service costs are varied regarding the age of products produced at different time points.

Supporting Co-Design of Physical and Control Architectures of Mechatronic Systems

There is a rather recent tendency to define the physical structure and the control structure of a system concurrently when designing the architecture of a product, i.e., to perform codesign. We argue that co-design can only be enabled when the mutual influence between physical system and control is made evident to the designer at an early stage. Though the idea of design integration is not new, to the best of our knowledge, there is no computer tooling that explicitly supports this activity by enabling co-design as stated before. In this paper the authors propose a method for co-design of physical and control architectures as a better approach to design mechatronic systems, allowing to exploit the synergy between software and hardware and detecting certain design problems at an early stage of design. The proposed approach is supported by a set of tools and demonstrated through an example case.Copyright