João Fradinho

Some trends and proposals for the inclusion of sustainability in the design of manufacturing process

Production processes are designed to meet requirements of three different natures, quality, cost and time. Environmental concerns have expanded the field of conceptual design through the introduction of sustainability requirements that are driven by the growing societal thoughtfulness about environmental issues. One could say that the major concern has been the definition of metrics or indices for sustainability. However, those metrics usually have some lack of consistency. More than ever, there is a need for an all-inclusive view at any level of decision-making, from the establishing of the design requirements to the implementation of the solutions. According to the Axiomatic Design Theory, sustainable designs are usually coupled designs that should be avoided. This raises a concern related to the very nature of sustainability: the cross effects between the actions that should be considered in the attempt to decouple the design solutions. In terms of production, one should clarify the characterization of the sustainability of production systems. The objectives of this paper are: i) to analyse some trends for approaching the sustainability of the production processes; ii) to define sustainability in terms of requirements for the design of the production processes; iii) to make some proposals based on the Axiomatic Design Theory, in order to establish the principles with which the guidelines for designing production processes must comply; iv) to discuss how to introduce this matter in teaching both manufacturing technology and design of production systems.

An Axiomatic Design Interpretation on the Use of Response Surface Methodology to Solve Coupled Designs

The most important design decisions are made in the outset of the designing process, when the knowledge about the final design solution is usually scarce and therefore uncertainty is high. According to the independence axiom of Axiomatic Design (AD), design solutions are classified in the following three basic types: uncoupled, decoupled and coupled, the former being the best type and the latter the poorest. As a rule, coupled designs should be avoided, not only because they infringe the independence axiom but also because their information content is hard to compute. Nonetheless, we argue that the occurrence of coupled solutions is noteworthy in general design, although we recognize that they are questionable and that many times they could be easily avoided. Our motivation is to contribute for changing the current state of affairs by showing how to use the minimum information content axiom to make early decisions in the development of coupled designs. One of the general engineering approaches to deal with multiple-FR, multiple-DP designs is the Response Surface Methodology (RSM). We will show in our paper how RSM can be used to deal with coupled designs as if they were uncoupled. The conclusion is that one can graphically compute the information content of coupled designs with two DPs and an arbitrary number of FRs by using multiple RSM. This means that RSM can be interpreted at the light of Axiomatic Design, and embodies an appropriate approach to support decision-making in the case of coupled designs.Copyright

The Role of the Eco-Requirements in the Sustainable Product Development Based on the Axiomatic Design Principles

One of the current trends of competitive companies is moving to eco-innovation. This pathway involves a multidisciplinary approach and a systemic attitude concerning to eco-design. The focus must be to analyse the customer requests from a sustainable viewpoint, understanding their real needs and finding solutions structurally sustainable from the early steps of the product development. The objective of this paper is to consider the perspective of the eco-design not as control issue, but something that should be used from the outset of the design process and be considered in the different domains of the design at all its levels of detail, in parallel with the ÒusualÓ functionality. The herein described consists in introducing the eco-requirements by structuring the eco-issues in the design product structure based on the Axiomatic Design theory. The result of this research is a proposal for a guideline for the structuring of the sustainable product development using a surfboard as an example.