A Model for Selecting Technologies in New Product Development

Due to fast changing technologies, shortening product lifecycles, and increased global competition, companies today often need to develop new products continuously and faster. Successful introduction and acceleration of new product development (NPD) is important to obtain competitive advantage for companies. Since technology selection for NPD involves complex decision makings that are critical to the profitability and growth of a company, the selection of the most appropriate technology for a new product requires the use of a robust decision-making framework capable of evaluating several technology candidates based on multiple criteria. This paper presents an integrated model that adopts interpretive structural modeling (ISM) and fuzzy analytic network process (FANP) to evaluate various different available technologies for NPD. The ISM is used to understand the interrelationships among the factors, and the FANP is to facilitate the evaluation process of decision makers under an uncertain environment with interrelated factors. A case study of a flat panel manufacturer is performed to examine the practicality of the proposed model. The results show that the model can be applied for group decision making on the available technology evaluation and selection in new product development

Future Orientation, Chronological Age and Product Attributes Preference

This dissertation examines what motivates individuals to prefer certain types of product attributes over others. It is proposed that consumer preference regarding product attributes is fundamentally connected to an individual’s future orientation, i.e., how a person perceives, thinks about, and copes with time left in life. Specifically, it is posited that future orientations play key roles in shaping a person’s criteria in product evaluation. Thus, this dissertation seeks to integrate the study of future orientation with research on socio-emotional selectivity influences on consumption. Building on past research, this study proposes a conceptual model including four constructs: future orientations, chronological age, product evaluation, and preferences. An experimental study was used to investigate the research objectives and calibrate and validate the model. The experiment examines the moderating effect of future orientations and chronological age on consumer preference for hedonic vs. utilitarian attributes. The subjects were randomly assigned to one of two future orientations (expansive and limited) and one of two attributes contexts (hedonic and utilitarian). The sample for this study was drawn from consumers in Metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia. The research results will lead to an improved understanding of how preference varies from individual to individual and changes over time. In particular the research will provide insights about the impact of an individual’s future orientation on product attitude. The findings will advance current theory in both the new product evaluation and preference literature and have implications for the practice of marketing at levels of marketing strategy, product development, integrated marketing communications and loyalty programs

An integrated environment for problem solving and program development

A framework for an integrated problem solving and program development environment that addresses the needs of students learning programming is proposed. Several objectives have been accomplished: defining the tasks required for program development and a literature review to determine the actual difficulties involved in learning those tasks. A comprehensive Study of environments and tools developed to support the learning of problem solving and programming was then performed, covering programming environments, debugging aids, intelligent tutoring systems, and intelligent programming environments. This was followed by a careful analysis and critique of these systems, which uncovered the limitations that have prevented them from accomplishing their goals. Next, an extensive study of problem solving methodologies developed in this century was carried out and a common model for problem solving was produced. The tasks of program development were then integrated with the common model for problem solving. Then, the cognitive activities required for problem solving and program development were identified and also integrated with the common model to form a Dual Common Model for problem Solving and Program Development. This dual common model was then used to define the functional specifications for a problem solving and program development environment which was designed, implemented, tested, and integrated into the curriculum. The development of the new environment for learning problem solving and programming was followed by the planning of a cognitively oriented assessment method and the development of related instruments to evaluate the process and the product of problem solving. A detailed statistical experiment to study the effect of this environment on students\u27 problem solving and program development skills, including system testing by protocol analysis, and performance evaluation of students based on research hypotheses and questions, was also designed, implemented and the result reported

Lean maturity assessment in eto scenario

The obligatory path towards a lean manufacturing organization requires assessment and monitoring. However, a lean assessment framework is not yet available for the engineer to order (ETO) scenario. This work explored ten lean ETO maturity principles—identified from the literature—that take insight from three formally defined sets (Toyota Way, lean construction, and lean product development principles). A practical assessment model was proposed based on the evaluation of ten lean ETO objective criteria (four with mathematical formulation) and was validated on a real industrial case. A problem‐solving tool, including a new lean tool, called the Problem Focus Matrix (PFM), was also presented; this tool was aimed toward development of an integrated framework that would include the organization mission, management, and continuous improvement

Humor Cartoon-Based Integrated Thematic Learning Model for Character Education in Elementary School

Adolescent moral crisis that occurred today in Indonesia has caused tremendous concern to the sustainability of human future development. The government decided to design and implement a new curriculum in 2013 which is more oriented character education in the learning process. Development ofan integrated thematic learning model based humor cartoon aims to produce an effective learning model, innovative and fun for students to improve the quality ofcharacter education in elementary schools. This study uses a model development AIDM (Alternative Instructional Design Models) with the subject and location in SD 08 Surau Gadang, Nanggalo, Padang - Indonesia. Data were collected by interview; observation and documentation were analyzed with descriptive quantitative and qualitative techniques.  After going through the process of designing, development and evaluation by expert validation of this model had a good degree of validity.  Based on initial implementation stated that some modeling exercises and character education in schools conducted by using images of humor cartoon as a medium that shows an excellent level of practicality. The effectiveness ofthe product revealed that this model shows some character values are the discipline of time, care for the environment and honesty; had given good results

Toward a joint modeling of land-use, transport and economy

It is widely accepted that spatial settlement and transportation are closely related: land use changes have impacts on the performance of the transportation network and changes in the transport system have impacts on settlement behavior. In a recent workshop on evaluation of large transport related infrastructure projects, in which research findings in The Netherlands and the UK were compared, it was concluded that determination of indirect effects related to a new spatial equilibrium, remains a challenge in project evaluation. Indirect effects related to large infrastructure projects may well exceed the direct effects. A research project has started at Delft University of Technology to develop a suitable model instrument for a dynamic modeling of the land-use and transportation system and assessment of economic impacts. The research will use and extend the existing MOBILEC model of the Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management in the Netherlands. The MOBILEC model is an interregional model that describes the relationship between economy, mobility and infrastructure. The model is a neoclassical growth model and uses macroeconomic relationships on the level of regions. In the paper a short overview will be presented of the overall framework for the modeling. Incorporation of the mutual influences of the economy, land-use and transport sectors receive special emphasis in this framework. The economy, transport system, labor market and housing market are endogenous in the modeling. The particular contribution of this dissertation research is the development of a model for the labor and housing market and the integration of these markets in the MOBILEC framework. In the current modeling the scale level of the COROP-regions (40 economical zones in the Netherlands) is used to determine of the real geographic product. In the new version the determination of the real geographic product will remain at the COROP-level, but for the housing an labor market a more detailed scale level will be used. At this detailed scale level the potential or attractiveness of zones for settlement of particular functions will be derived from the characteristics of the location itself and the accessibility to facilities in the region (employment, recreational, etc.). Discrete choice techniques will be used to determine the user preferences for settlement. The labor and housing market module will operate in a dynamic environment with a long term perspective, time increments of 3 years will be used. In the MOBILEC model an extended Cobb-Douglas production function is used to calculate the real geographic product of a region. One of the factors in the function concerns productive traffic. In this way the impact of the productive mobility (freight transport and business traffic) on the regional geographic product can be calculated. The inclusion of the housing market and labor market in the framework creates extra opportunities to analyze land-use and transport related issues, such as: indirect economical impacts as agglomeration effects or labor market imperfections. In the first version the agglomeration effects will be included in the real geographic product. analysis of spatial - and transport policies in an integrated way. analysis of commuter traffic in more detail.

Enabling agile web development through in-browser code generation and evaluation

Rapid evolution and flexibility are the key of modern web application development. Rapid Prototyping approaches try to facilitate evolution by reducing the time between the elicitation of a new requirement and the evaluation of a prototype by both developers and customers. Software generation, with disciplines such as Software Product Lines Engineering or Model Driven Engineering, favours the required flexibility for the development process. Nevertheless, each small change in the design of an application requires a full redeployment of complex environments in order to allow customers to test and evaluate the new configuration. In this work we present an approach that improves the development process reducing the complexity of deploying evaluation prototypes and enabling an agile development cycle. The approach can be applied using software generation and it is based on in-browser generation and evaluation. We also describe two real world tools that have integrated the proposed approach in their development cycle

A risk analysis methodology for micro/nano manufacturing

This research concerns the development of a risk analysis and mitigation methodology for assessing the impact of uncertainties and complexity of the design requirements arising in new process and product developments in micro and nano manufacturing. The risk analysis methodology integrates different computational approaches for process and product analysis, including the reduced order modelling using design of experiments, risk analysis using sampling-based and analytical methods and optimisation techniques. The integrated risk analysis and optimisation methodology is applied to two applications: (1) the FIB sputtering process control, and (2) a flip chip design. Three different FIB processes using different ion sources were investigated in order to evaluate their process performance with respects to different process parameter uncertainties. A critical comparison of the process capability against the specification limits of different processes was studied. As parts of the research, a new modified computational model is developed for a material sputtering process using focused ion beam (FIB). This model allows the analysis of micro- and nano-structures shape with the FIB machine controlled through multiple beam scans and different beam overlapping. The FIB model related studies also address the modelling requirements for including material re-deposition effects that occur during FIB milling. The model has been validated using an experimental test case. Good agreement is observed between the analytical shape using the model and the actual experiment. The validated model enhances the accuracy of the dwell time prediction. This approach overcomes the dependence of a trial-and-error approach of the process control in nano-manufacturing industry. The proposed methodology is also used to address a design problem of a flip chip design. A novel method for the evaluation of the environmental impact of the flip chip design in a multi-disciplinary optimisation problem is proposed. The goal is to address materials constraints due to environmental regulations and to handle different types of requirements such as the reliability and cost. An optimal flip chip design reliability function is identified. The approach allows electronics manufacturers to consider the environmental impact amongst different design alternatives at an early stage of the design of the product before any real prototyping in order to reduce the total manufacturing life cycle

A design tool architecture for the rapid evaluation of product design tradeoffs in an Inernet-based system modeling environment

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2005.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 117-122).This thesis presents a computer-aided design tool for the rapid evaluation of design tradeoffs in an integrated product modeling environment. The goal of this work is to provide product development organizations with better means of exploring product design spaces so as to identify promising de- sign candidates early in the concept generation phase. Ultimately, such practices would streamline the product development process. The proposed design tool is made up of two key components: an optimization engine, and the Distributed Object-based Modeling Environment. This modeling environment is part of an ongoing research initiative at the Computer-Aided Design Lab. The optimization engine consists of a multi- objective evolutionary algorithm developed at the Ecole Polytechnique F6d6rale de Lausanne. The first part of this thesis provides a comprehensive survey of all topics relevant to this work. Traditional product development is discussed along with some of the challenges inherent in this process. Integrated modeling tools are surveyed. Finally, a variety of optimization methods and algorithms are discussed, along with a review of commercially available optimization packages. The second part discusses the developed design tool and the implications of this work on traditional product development. After a detailed description of the optimization algorithm, use of the design tool is illustrated with a trivial design example.(cont.) Enabled by this work, a new "target-driven" design approach is introduced. In this approach, individuals select optimal tradeoffs between competing design objectives and use them, as design targets, to configure the integrated product model so as to achieve best-overall product performance. Validation of this design approach is done through the design of a hybrid PV-diesel energy system for two different applications. It is shown that the design tool effectively evaluates design tradeoffs and allows for the rapid derivation of optimal design alternatives.by Jacob Wronski.S.M