Kilian Gericke

An analysis of functional modeling approaches across disciplines

Abstract Authors across disciplines propose functional modeling as part of systematic design approaches, in order to support and guide designers during conceptual design. The presented research aims at contributing to a better understanding of the diverse functional modeling approaches proposed across disciplines. The article presents a literature review of 41 modeling approaches from a variety of disciplines. The analysis focuses on what is addressed by functional modeling at which point in the proposed conceptual design process (i.e., in which sequence). The gained insights lead to the identification of specific needs and opportunities, which could support the development of an integrated functional modeling approach. The findings suggest that there is no such shared sequence for functional modeling across disciplines. However, a shared functional modeling perspective has been identified across all reviewed disciplines, which could serve as a common basis for the development of an integrated functional modeling approach.

Analyzing Transdisciplinary Design Processes in Industry: An Overview

Integrated product design and development in today’s highly competitive, demanding and economically challenging world is a complex process depending upon input of many individuals, groups, organizations and even communities, which collaborate to realize the product. Due to the multi-technology nature of modern products, the design process requires multi-disciplinary resources.Engineering design literature provides an extensive knowledge base of product design processes, most of which are specific in an explicit or an implicit way to a specific discipline. This is because some time ago, the products were perceived to be rather mono-disciplinary.Recently, design processes have been described for integrated products from inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary team perspective (e.g. [1]), however, they too take product specific and discipline specific point of view.This paper takes a transdisciplinary perspective towards product design and presents results from an empirical study carried out to analyze the design process of different integrated products belonging to different disciplines/industrial segments; all of which involve multi-disciplinary or transdisciplinary involvement.A framework based on key findings from the transdisciplinary consolidation of academic design process models presented by Gericke and Blessing and Eisenbart et al. is developed and used to provide answers to the following research questions:• How well does the literature based trans-disciplinary design process apply to the trans-disciplinary industrial context?• Are there similarities between design processes across organizations regarding presence of process stages and design states?• Are there any elements that deviate from the literature-based framework?Copyright

Integrating Different Functional Modeling Perspectives

The paper proposes a modular functional modeling framework, which aims at integrating the different functional modeling perspectives, relevant to different disciplines. The results of two extensive literature studies on diverse functional modeling approaches proposed in a variety of disciplines are consolidated. These studies identified specific needs for an integrated functional modeling approach to support interdisciplinary conceptual design. The presented framework aims at fulfilling these needs. It consists of a variety of associated views, represented through different matrices. This matrix-based representation facilitates the analysis of different functional modeling perspectives and their interdependencies. Finally, the implications of the presented approach are discussed.

The Integrated Function Modelling Framework and its Relation to Function Structures

Abstract Research and industrial practice have produced a host of function models and modeling approaches over the last decades. Each of these is meant to support designers in their design endeavors. Industrial practice is excessively diversified in terms of contextual requirements, aims, and adopted processes; this automatically begs the question which of the existing models should be selected for application in a specific situation. This paper sets out to contribute to this discourse. It strives to benchmark the fairly novel integrated function modeling (IFM) framework against the well-established function structures modeling approach. The paper comparatively investigates the respective capabilities of the approaches, following the benchmarking protocol used earlier in relation to this Special Issue. Function structures are used as reference as they represent one of the most widespread function modeling approaches in research and practice. Both function structures and the IFM framework are exemplarily applied for modeling a glue gun. The gradual generation and refinement of the models is used to showcase their respective benefits and shortcomings. Eventually, the IFM framework is found to excel over function structures in terms of comprehensiveness and support for different types of function analyses. Finally, future research directions are proposed.

Designing Meaning to Change Consumer Behaviour: An Exploration

The focus of our research is to support designers in fostering a more sustainable behaviour of consumers by creating meaning in products and services. The paper describes the results of a literature study into the process of meaning making and the mechanisms through which meaning affects consumer behaviour. Meaning is defined as a mental representation of possible relationships. An initial model, the Meaning-Behaviour Model, is presented, integrating the mechanisms found in literature. Five possible interventions, derived from the model, show how designers can use meaning as a lever to foster enduring behavioural change. The paper contributes to the discussion of introducing meaning through design by exploring the link between meaning and behaviour.

DSM for Modeling and Analyzing Functionality: Views of Practitioners

The paper presents an evaluation study for a DSM-based function modeling framework with practitioners in industry. Questionnaires and open discussion are used in a workshop format to obtain feedback on the framework’s usefulness and practical applicability. It allows flexibly adaptive modeling multiple, inter-related views onto the functionality of (interdisciplinary) systems. The findings suggests a large potential for the framework to support cross-disciplinary design and for using the inherent matrices to do function analysis. The paper highlights the views of the practitioners on the strengths and potentials for further improvement.

Designing Sustainable Technologies, Products and Policies

This article summarizes the panel session “Life Cycle Management approaches to support Circular Economy” of the 8th International Conference on Life Cycle Management (LCM2017 conference, Luxembourg). Four panellists were invited to share their point of view on this topic. Each of them brought a different perspective, addressing the topic from both the academic and industrial point of view; focusing on a raw materials aspect or considering a life cycle (or eco-design) related scope; in the context of a certification process (for products or activities) or of an eco-innovation process (including new business models for circular economy). After short presentation by each of the panellists, the discussion especially addressed the complementarity between several LCM concepts to be considered jointly when developing circular concepts and models. S. Zinck (&) Environmental Research and Innovation, Life Cycle Sustainability and Risk Assessment, Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, 4422 Belvaux, Luxembourg e-mail: sebastien.zinck@list.lu A.-C. Ayed Tarkett, R&I Centre, Z.A. Salzbaach, 9559 Wiltz, Luxembourg M. Niero Division for Quantitative Sustainability Assessment, Technical University of Denmark, DTU Management Engineering, 2800 Kongens Lyngby, Denmark M. Head Steelcase Inc., Global Sustainability, 901 44th St. SE, Grand Rapids MI, USA F.-W. Wellmer Federal German Institute of Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR), Neue Sachlichkeit 32, 30655 Hannover, Germany R. W. Scholz Natural and Social Science Interface, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Switzerland S. Morel Renault, Technocentre, 1, Avenue du Golf, 78280 Guyancourt, France

A Model for Value in Lean Product Development

Lean product development has been developed and deployed in an effort to enhance company operations. Understanding value is the first step to becoming ‘Lean’. However, the mere translation of value from its conventional interpretation in lean production as “something the customer will pay for” does not equate to an effective value orientation in product development (PD).

DISCOVERY AND EVALUATION OF DESIGN METHODS IN PRACTICE: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY

Web platforms and literature on design methods allow users to search for existing methods based on the method’s name and stage of use. Little support is provided to assess whether a method is appropriate for the task at hand and the context where the method will be applied.In this explorative study, patterns in searching, selecting, assessing and exchanging experiences with peers in professional practice were analyzed across a range of disciplines. This work reports on our findings from interviews conducted with practicing engineers and designers.Several similarities in the way practitioners find, select and assess new methods were found and interesting differences were identified for the practices in exchanging experiences with peers.In this work, we present the findings of our interview study along with directions for future work to better understand design processes in professional practice.Copyright

Analysis and Visualization of Project Structure Using Linkography: Focussing Project Risk Management

Product development projects are difficult to plan due to complexity, dynamics, lack of transparency and polytely. Risk Management is often used to cope with this situation. Linkography (originally proposed by Goldschmidt) is adapted with the aim to ease the effort of the Risk Management process. The elements of the original method are transferred to the area of Project Risk Management, complemented by a real time scale, and cost information of elements. Linkography is used to focus all Risk Management activities on those work packages, which might affect the project the most in the case of failing the expected outcome. The number of links to other work packages, its duration and its costs defines the criticality of a work package. By applying Linkography as a Risk Management method, a prioritized list of work packages can be generated which pass consecutively through the usual Risk Management process. Unlike other methods, Linkography supports the user in a visual manner. Hence, Linkography can easily be used for communication with unskilled stakeholders.Copyright