An introduction to personalization and mass customization

Mass customization as a state-of-the-art production paradigm aims to produce individualized, highly variant products and services with nearly mass production costs. A major side-effect for companies providing complex products and services is that customers quite often get confused by the high variety and do not make a purchase. Personalization technologies can help to alleviate the challenges of mass customization. These technologies support customers in specifying products and services that fit their wishes and needs in a fashion where decision and interaction efforts with sales support systems are significantly reduced. We provide a short overview of related research and the articles that are part of this special issue on Personalization and Mass Customization.Peer reviewe

Building renovation adopts mass customization: Configuring insulating envelopes

International audienceThis work is motivated by an industrial need of manufacturing façades insulating envelopes in order to reduce energy consumption in residential buildings. An insulating envelope is a configuration of a set of rectangular panels that respects a set of limitations. Due to the number of façades to be renovated and the number of possible configurations for a single façade, the envelope configuration is both a mass customization problem as well as a combinatorial one. The paper then introduces a decision support system based on the framework of constraint satisfaction, as it fits neatly the constrained nature of the problem. Two configuration tasks have been identified as prerequisite to envelopes configurations: (1) the configuration of a questionnaire for information inputs and (2) the configuration of a constraint satisfaction problem for each one of the façades to be renovated. The system architecture promotes maintenance, modularity and efficiency as different configuration tasks are divided into web-services. Conception and implementation of the massive building thermal renovation are then supported

Design for energy efficiency: Energy efficient industrialized housing research program. Progress report

Since 1989, the U.S. Department of Energy has sponsored the Energy Efficient Industrialized Housing research program (EEIH) to improve the energy efficiency of industrialized housing. Two research centers share responsibility for this program: The Center for Housing Innovation at the University of Oregon and the Florida Solar Energy Center, a research institute of the University of Central Florida. Additional funding is provided through the participation of private industry, state governments and utilities. The program is guided by a steering committee comprised of industry and government representatives. This report summarizes Fiscal Year (FY) 1990 activities and progress, and proposed activities for FY 1991 in Task 2.1 Design for Energy Efficiency. This task establishes a vision of energy conservation opportunities in critical regions, market segments, climate zones and manufacturing strategies significant to industrialized housing in the 21st Century. In early FY 1990, four problem statements were developed to define future housing demand scenarios inclusive of issues of energy efficiency, housing design and manufacturing. Literature surveys were completed to assess seven areas of influence for industrialized housing and energy conservation in the future. Fifty-five future trends were identified in computing and design process; manufacturing process; construction materials, components and systems; energy and environment; demographic context; economic context; and planning policy and regulatory context

Architectural Design Strategies for Building-Integrated Photovoltaics in residential building renovation processes

Tomorrow's European cities are already largely built, as much of the existing building stock ¿ with a low level of energy performance ¿ will still be standing in 2050. Urban renewal processes therefore play an essential role towards their sustainable transition. In this context, Building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) systems can potentially provide a crucial contribution to achieve current energy and mid- to long-term carbon targets based on the 2¿000-Watt society concept in Switzerland, and to fulfil the objectives of the energy turnaround for 2050. Functioning both as envelope material and electricity generator, BIPV systems can simultaneously reduce the use of fossil fuels and greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions, while providing savings in materials and electricity costs. These are precisely the objectives of most European energy directives, from zero- to positive-energy buildings. However, despite continuous technological progress and increasingly favourable economic conditions, the significant assets of BIPV remain broadly undervalued in the current practice. Various obstacles related among others to technology choice, low demand (which induces small volume production of BIPV products), and lack of information and of aesthetically convincing renovation examples, tend to increase the costs and prevent the acceptance of BIPV solutions. Considering that BIPV can be integrated into the design process, but in a case-specific rather than in a systematic way, this thesis aims at offering support to stakeholders ¿ especially architects ¿ involved in the design process of renovation projects. Focusing on an integrated architectural design process for addressing renovation projects of residential buildings, the approach involves four main phases: (1) building stock analysis to identify representative (archetypal) situations, (2) detailed analysis of real case studies, (3) architectural design of different renovation scenarios using BIPV strategies, and (4) multi-criteria assessment of each scenario. The concrete contributions of this thesis are twofold. First, a set of integrated design strategies ¿ illustrated through real case studies ¿ is defined to promote the integration of BIPV in urban renewal processes. It integrates: (i) passive strategies, to improve the envelope through low embodied-energy materials and construction systems, (ii) BIPV strategies, using innovative photovoltaic products as a new material for façades and roofs, and (iii) active strategies, adapting heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems to improve the efficiency of the BIPV installation and reduce the dependence on feed-in-tariffs to ensure the profitability of investments. Second, a multi-criteria assessment methodology is developed to compare the different intervention scenarios, based on a qualitative and quantitative approach. The proposed workflow thus allows comparing different design solutions in terms of BIPV performance, final energy balance, Life-Cycle Analysis (LCA) and Cost (LCC) of the whole renovation process. This approach shall provide architects and engineers with advanced BIPV renovation strategies that depend on the building typology, the architectural design goals, and the level of intervention, thus supporting and inspiring them towards a low-carbon built environment

Sustainability in design: now! Challenges and opportunities for design research, education and practice in the XXI century

Copyright @ 2010 Greenleaf PublicationsLeNS project funded by the Asia Link Programme, EuropeAid, European Commission

Modelling Outcomes of Collaboration in Building Information Modelling Through Gaming Theory Lenses

Construction project performance is vulnerable to process fragmentation and weak frameworks for sustaining objectivity and value integration between stakeholders, including clients, involved in the project development processes. For centuries, conventional construction processes have endured the challenges associated with this phenomenon. Several industry reports have suggested this situation is responsive to effective communication, collaboration, thorough integration and a passion for objectivity in data sharing and information management between key players. While entity-based computer-aided design (CAD) lacks the framework to facilitate an effective result in this direction, Building Information Modelling (BIM) has shown the potential for major improvements over the limitations of manual and CAD design methods. Three Game Theory models (Prisoner’s dilemma, Pareto Optima and Hawk-dove) have been proposed to mirror certain implications of players’ actions in BIM environment. In all the gaming lenses used, the study suggests that stakeholders and industry will only benefit when BIM is fully adopted. It has been established that when BIM is partially adopted, the compliant party is likely to benefit more, while the non-compliant party may not necessarily gain the same benefits. The study concluded that BIM means a lot to the industry; the industry cannot afford the consequences of failing to adopt BIM potentials and allied innovations in an era where digital technology is revolutionising other industries. Recommendations are made on areas for further research

Integrating affordable housing and sustainable housing: bridging two merit goods in Australia

Interest among planning and policy makers in environmentally sustainable housing has risen in recent years as a response to the global goal of attaining sustainable development. In Australia, there has long been concern that the market might under-provide affordable housing and, more recently, concerns have been raised over the capacity of the market to provide sustainable housing. Governments in Australia have intervened through subsidies, tax incentives and more direct forms of support for the provision of affordable and sustainable housing. Providing environmentally sustainable housing is thus perceived to be a “merit good” in Australia. That is, a good that has social merit but one that is underprovided by markets. Contemporary housing policy debate in Australia has emphasised the need to respond to a growing housing affordability challenge. Affordable housing might also be seen to be a merit good in Australia. Nevertheless there has been a reluctance to consider housing sustainability in the same context as housing affordability. This chapter addresses the debate over affordable and sustainable housing in Australia by drawing on learnings from the Ecocents Living research project to suggest a conceptual basis to understand the issues at hand. Ecocents Living is a project that seeks to integrate the concepts of affordable and sustainable housing into a model to guide industrial implementation of sustainable and affordable housing. It is argued that the concepts of sustainable housing and affordable housing have synergies that warrant consideration and the further development of an embryonic model for integrating sustainable and affordable housing is offered in this chapter.George Zillante, Stephen Pullen, Lou Wilson, Kathryn Davidson, Nicholas Chileshe, Jian Zuo, Michael Arma