Knitwear customisation as repeated redesign

Producing large numbers of garment variants will only be economically viable if it requires very little human effort. But garment customisation cannot always be fully automated. Applying grading rules maintain the same details but sometimes achieves a different overall effect; but the customer expects the same overall effect and is less concerned about details. Choosing between alternative customisations requires a human designer's trained perceptual judgement. Therefore a viable mass customisation support system must support the repeated redesign of a garment by combining automatic design with fast human editing. Evaluating and modifying the suggestions of others is a natural and efficient activity for designers. This paper describes two prototype automatic design systems exploring techniques that could be used for mass customisation of knitted garments – in which the shape and patterns are indivisibly linked. An early pattern placing system that automatically altered both shape and pattern parameters in a variety of alternative ways. A shape design system that generates technically correct and consistent garment shapes from a set of measurements and a verbal description; it works independently of sizes, recalculating the shape for each new set of measurements. Starting from the system's suggestions, designers can very quickly tweak the new design to fulfil their aesthetic intentions

The introduction of an holistic design approach through a teaching company scheme

Traditional design approaches separate the various functions of design such as material selection, performance modelling and tolerance specification into discrete entities. Whilst this allows more focused methods to be used at each stage, areas of conflict or benefit may be overlooked, and the designer is left to bring the loose ends together. This paper looks at a synthesis approach that draws upon a number of current design themes. The design process is considered along with various aspects such as product development, design-for-`X' methodologies and material selection. The need for the preservation of design knowledge and reasoning, the so called wh-? questions, within the process are considered along with various models of the design process. The paper draws these various aspects together to form a more holistic approach to design. The application of this technique within the Teaching Company Scheme is briefly discussed

A Survey on Evaluation Factors for Business Process Management Technology

Estimating the value of business process management (BPM) technology is a difficult task to accomplish. Computerized business processes have a strong impact on an organization, and BPM projects have a long-term cost amortization. To systematically analyze BPM technology from an economic-driven perspective, we are currently developing an evaluation framework in the EcoPOST project. In order to empirically validate the relevance of assumed evaluation factors (e.g., process knowledge, business process redesign, end user fears, and communication) we have conducted an online survey among 70 BPM experts from more than 50 industrial and academic organizations. This paper summarizes the results of this survey. Our results help both researchers and practitioners to better understand the evaluation factors that determine the value of BPM technology

Valid knowledge for the professional design of large and complex design processes

innovation, networks

Unleashing the Effectiveness of Process-oriented Information Systems: Problem Analysis, Critical Success Factors, Implications

Process-oriented information systems (IS) aim at the computerized support of business processes. So far, contemporary IS have often fail to meet this goal. To better understand this drawback, to systematically identify its rationales, and to derive critical success factors for business process support, we conducted three empirical studies: an exploratory case study in the automotive domain, an online survey among 79 IT professionals, and another online survey among 70 business process management (BPM) experts. This paper summarizes the findings of these studies, puts them in relation with each other, and uses them to show that "process-orientation" is scarce and "process-awareness" is needed in IS engineering

Robust optimization of cardiovascular stents: A comparison of methods

This is the post-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accssed from the links below. Copyright @ 2004 Taylor & FrancisModern engineering design contains both creative and analytic components. This paper discusses the design process and illustrates links between design optimization and conceptual design through the re-design of a cardiovascular stent. A comparison is presented of two methods for design improvement: genetic algorithms (GA) and model-based robust engineering design (RED). Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models are used to generate measurements of the quality of competing designs based on the concept of dissipated power. Alternative performance measures are also discussed. Environmental noise is introduced into the analysis and consideration is given to the treatment of discrete and continuous design parameters. Improved designs are identified using both methods and verified with further CFD analyses, and the benefits of each method are discussed