Patrick K. Lewis

An Engineering Design Strategy for Reconfigurable Products That Support Poverty Alleviation

Reconfigurable products can adapt to new and changing customer needs. One potential, high-impact, area for product reconfiguration is in the design of income-generating products for poverty alleviation. Non-reconfigurable income-generating products such as manual irrigation pumps have helped millions of people sustainably escape poverty. However, millions of other impoverished people are unwilling to invest in these relatively costly products because of the high perceived and actual financial risk involved. As a result, these individuals do not benefit from such technologies. Alternatively, when income-generating products are designed to be reconfigurable, the window of affordability can be expanded to attract more individuals, while simultaneously making the product adaptable to the changing customer needs that accompany an increased income. The method provided in this paper significantly reduces the risks associated with purchasing income-generating products while simultaneously allowing the initial purchase to serve as a foundation for future increases in income. The method presented builds on principles of multiobjective optimization and Pareto optimality, by allowing the product to move from one location on the Pareto frontier to another through the addition of modules and reconfiguration. Elements of product family design are applied as each instantiation of the reconfigurable product is considered in the overall design optimization of the product. The design of a modular irrigation pump for developing nations demonstrates the methodology.© 2010 ASME

Identification of Modular Product Platforms and Modules that Account for Changing Consumer Needs

In some instances, the consumer needs of a product naturally and predictably change over time. Providing solutions that anticipate, account for, and allow for these changes is a significant challenge to manufacturers and design engineers. Products that adapt to these changes through the addition of modules reduce production costs through product commonality and provide a set of products that cater to customization and adaptation. In this paper, a multiobjective optimization design method is developed and used to identify a set of optimal adaptive product designs that satisfy changing consumer needs. The novel intent of the proposed method is to design a product that adapts to changing consumer needs by moving from one location on the Pareto frontier to another through the addition of a module. The five-step method is described as follows: (A) Characterize the multiobjective design space. (B) Identify the anticipated regions of interest within the search space based on predicted future needs

Modular Product Optimization to Alleviate Poverty: An Irrigation Pump Case Study

One potential, high–impact area for modular products is the design of income–generating products for poverty alleviation. Income–generating products have helped millions of people sustainably escape poverty. However, millions of other impoverished people are unwilling to invest in these relatively costly products. Modular products have the potential to reduce/overcome this barrier by enabling a product to incrementally adapt to changes in income potential. In previous work of the authors, an optimisation–based modular product design method was developed. Implementation of this method in the creation of a modular irrigation pump is presented herein. The purpose of this study is to physically validate the ability of the method to identify progressively affordable modular products by comparing the performance of the theoretical and physical prototypes of the pump. Based on observations from this comparison, the authors conclude that the method is a feasible approach to engineering–based poverty alleviation.

Modular product optimisation to alleviate poverty: an irrigation pump case study

One potential, high-impact area for modular products is the design of income-generating products for poverty alleviation. Income-generating products have helped millions of people sustainably escape poverty. However, millions of other impoverished people are unwilling to invest in these relatively costly products. Modular products have the potential to reduce/overcome this barrier by enabling a product to incrementally adapt to changes in income potential. In previous work of the authors, an optimisation-based modular product design method was developed. Implementation of this method in the creation of a modular irrigation pump is presented herein. The purpose of this study is to physically validate the ability of the method to identify progressively affordable modular products by comparing the performance of the theoretical and physical prototypes of the pump. Based on observations from this comparison, the authors conclude that the method is a feasible approach to engineering-based poverty alleviation.

A Method for Identifying Design Principles for the Developing World

Growing awareness of the unique needs and challenges in the developing world has resulted in the development of products for those in poverty. Successful product design focuses development eorts on design principles that are important to a target market. Consequently, the better these principles are understood, the higher the probability is that resulting products will be successful. Recognizing that the identification of these principles is a major challenge, this paper presents a method for identifying them for any target market, but especially for the developing world. The presented methodology uses characteristics of products within the target market to extract information about the underlying design decisions resulting in these characteristics. This information is then used to identify the design principles. To verify the ability of the method to identify these principles, the method is applied to best selling products in the US and then applied to products created for the developing world. The resulting principles from the two markets are then analyzed and compared to highlight the similarities and dierences between the identified principles. The authors conclude that the resulting list of principles will enable designers to better design and develop products for the developing world.

A METHOD FOR DESIGNING COLLABORATIVE PRODUCTS WITH APPLICATION TO POVERTY ALLEVIATION

Collaborative products are created when physical components from two or more products are temporarily recombined to form another product capable of performing additional tasks. In this paper, a method for designing collaborative products is introduced. The method identifies a set of products capable of being recombined into a collaborative product. These products are then designed to allow for this recombination. Collaborative products are particularly useful in reducing the cost, weight, and size of poverty-alleviating products—reductions that are valued in the developing world. A simple example of a cabinet maker’s tool shows that a collaborative block plane created from a chisel and sanding block can account for reductions in cost, weight, and size of 44%, 38%, and 44% respectively, when compared to a typical wooden block plane, chisel, and sanding block. Additionally, an example of a collaborative apple peeler is provided to demonstrate scalability of the method. The authors conclude that the method introduced herein provides a new and useful tool to design collaborative products and to assist in engineering-based poverty alleviation.Copyright

Accounting for Changing Customer Needs With s-Pareto Frontiers

The development of new products often results from natural changes in customer needs. Products which anticipate, account for, and allow for these natural changes through the addition of modules, although challenging for manufacturers and design engineers to develop, capitalize on product commonality to reduce production costs. In this paper, the Pareto-based multiobjective optimization design method previously developed by the authors is extended to satisfy changing needs by using s-Pareto frontiers ‐ sets of non-dominated designs from disparate design models. The novel intent of the presented method is to design a product that moves from one location on the s-Pareto frontier to another, thus satisfying changing customer needs, through the addition of a module. The expanded six-step method is described as follows: (A) Characterize the multiobjective design space. (B) Identify the anticipated regions of interest within the search space based on predicted future needs

Divergent Exploration in Design with a Dynamic Multiobjective Optimization Formulation

Formulation space exploration is a new strategy for multiobjective optimization that facilitates both divergent exploration and convergent optimization during the early stages of design. The formulation space is the union of all variable and design objective spaces identified by the designer as being valid and pragmatic problem formulations. By extending a computational search into the formulation space, the solution to an optimization problem is no longer predefined by any single problem formulation, as it is with traditional optimization methods. Instead, a designer is free to change, modify, and update design objectives, variables, and constraints and explore design alternatives without requiring a concrete understanding of the design problem a priori. To facilitate this process, we introduce a new vector/matrix-based definition for multiobjective optimization problems, which is dynamic in nature and easily modified. Additionally, we provide a set of exploration metrics to help guide designers while exploring the formulation space. Finally, we provide an example to illustrate the use of this new, dynamic approach to multiobjective

Designing Products for Optimal Collaborative Performance With Application to Engineering-Based Poverty Alleviation

Collaborative products are created by combining components from two or more products to result in an additional product that performs previously unattainable tasks. The resulting reduction in cost, weight, and size of a set of products needed to perform a set of functions makes collaborative products useful in the developing world. In this paper, a method for designing a set of products for optimal individual and collaborative performance is introduced. This is accomplished by: (i) characterizing the collaborative design space of the product set and collaborative product, (ii) defining areas of acceptable Pareto offset, (iii) identifying the combinations of designs that fall within the defined areas of acceptable Pareto offset for each product, and (iv) selecting the optimal set of product designs. An example is provided to illustrate this method and demonstrate its usefulness in designing collaborative products for both the developed and developing world. We conclude that the presented method is a novel, and useful, approach for balancing the inherent trade-offs between the performance of collaborative products and the product sets used to create them.Copyright

Multiobjective Optimization of Modular Systems that Traverse Dynamic s-Pareto Frontiers

The use of multiobjective optimization in identifying systems that account for changes in needs/preferences, operating environments, concepts, and analysis models over time is not commonly explored. In terms of identifying sets of non-dominated designs, these changes result in the concept of dynamic Pareto frontiers, or dynamic s-Pareto frontiers in cases where sets of system concepts are being evaluated simultaneously over time. In a previous work by the authors, a 6-step optimization-based method was presented to identify systems that account for predicted changes in needs/preferences by moving from one s-Pareto design to another through module addition. Addressing some of the limitations of this method, this paper presents an improved 5-step optimization-based method that builds on recent developments in multiobjective problem formulations of dynamic s-Pareto frontiers. In addition, recognizing the inherent uncertainty associated with predicting future needs/preferences and dynamic s-Pareto frontiers, the incorporation of uncertainty analysis in this improved method is also presented as an additional method improvement. Application of the the presented method is illustrated through a simple truss example.