Innovation is created by humans, not by systems: an exploration of user involvement in living labs: user motivation versus lead user criteria

The past few years companies have become more interested in involving users during the production process of their products. On the other hand, a group of users started to innovate on their own. Users also became interested in becoming part of the production processes themselves. Certain users experience certain needs earlier than others and they enjoy finding solutions for these needs. They are called Lead Users (von Hippel, 2005). Living Labs are one possibility for users to realize this interest to innovate. iLab.o, the Living Lab division of iMinds, has been organizing Living Lab research since 2009. To get a better view on the motivations of this panel, we analyzed the behavior of the involved users from September 2009 to December 2013. We tried to detect Lead Users, but it is not obvious to define people as Lead Users because of the different used definitions. Instead, we divided this panel into three types of users based on the intensity of their involvement: passive, sleeping and active users. A small group of users is extremely active and are been defined as “alpha users”. Based on interviews with these alpha users in November and December 2013, a better view on their motivations to keep participating in Living Lab research was made. In this paper we focus on the participation of these different user types in one research phase type within Living Lab research, more specifically co-creation sessions. By means of a comparative case study, we tried to get a better understanding of the behavior of the different user types. It became clear that in order to keep the panel involved it is important to focus on community building

Development of an Extended Product Lifecycle Management through Service Oriented Architecture.

Organised by: Cranfield UniversityThe aim of this work is to define new business opportunities through the concept of Extended Product Lifecycle Management (ExtPLM), analysing its potential implementation within a Service Oriented Architecture. ExtPLM merges the concepts of Extended Product, Avatar and PLM. It aims at allowing a closer interaction between enterprises and their customers, who are integrated in all phases of the life cycle, creating new technical functionalities and services, improving both the practical (e.g. improving usage, improving safety, allowing predictive maintenance) and the emotional side (e.g. extreme customization) of the product.Mori Seiki – The Machine Tool Company; BAE Systems; S4T – Support Service Solutions: Strategy and Transitio

A metric to represent the evolution of CAD/analysis models in collaborative design

Computer Aided Design (CAD) and Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) models are often used during product design. Various interactions between the different models must be managed for the designed system to be robust and in accordance with initially defined specifications. Research published to date has for example considered the link between digital mock-up and analysis models. However design/analysis integration must take into consideration the important number of models (digital mock-up and simulation) due to model evolution in time, as well as considering system engineering. To effectively manage modifications made to the system, the dependencies between the different models must be known and the nature of the modification must be characterised to estimate the impact of the modification throughout the dependent models. We propose a technique to describe the nature of a modification which may be used to determine the consequence within other models as well as a way to qualify the modified information. To achieve this, a metric is proposed that allows the qualification and evaluation of data or information, based on the maturity and validity of information and model

The role of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies for individualisation and service quality of a PSS

Nowadays, product manufacturers are compelled to increasingly becoming Product Service System (PSS) providers for surviving and managing the increased global competition. 20% of the enterprises have already integrated services in their product offerings. Meanwhile, the Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to grow significantly in the next years. Smart products are growing fast and are expected to reach 212 billion entities at the end of 2020. From an economic point of view, it is estimated that the impact of IoT is in a range of $2.7 to$6.2 trillion by 2025. IoT is surely an enabler of PSSs, allowing the collection and sharing of vast quantities of information along the whole solution life. This article aims to evaluate the impact that IoT technologies can have on the PSS provision when aiming at the satisfaction of highly diverting customer needs. Particularly, the analysis considers three dimensions: the typology of services enabled, the customization approach enabled, and the service quality gaps disclosed by IoT. By means of multiple use cases, the authors found out that IoT technologies have a huge impact on the different phases of the whole PSS lifecycle. Several advantages were detected for the different stakeholders involved in terms of both service efficiency and effectiveness. Based on these results, the strategic contact points to cope with possible trade-offs between the PSS individualization approach and its service quality are proposed

Identification of Technology Integration Challenges at Two Global Automotive OEMs

Platform design has been firmly established in the automotive industry as a strategy to provide wider product variety while maintaining cost effective production. But this strategy can struggle to keep up with the pace and nature of emerging technologies. This paper reviews the existing approaches to modelling product platforms, and showcases the challenges at OEMs introducing new technological innovations in their platforms. A gap is identified in the methods to assess the ability of existing platforms to integrate new technologies whenever they become available

The Telemetry Agile Manufacturing Effort

The Telemetry Agile Manufacturing Effort (TAME) is an agile enterprising demonstration sponsored by the US Department of Energy (DOE). The project experimented with new approaches to product realization and assessed their impacts on performance, cost, flow time, and agility. The purpose of the project was to design the electrical and mechanical features of an integrated telemetry processor, establish the manufacturing processes, and produce an initial production lot of two to six units. This paper outlines the major methodologies utilized by the TAME, describes the accomplishments that can be attributed to each methodology, and finally, examines the lessons learned and explores the opportunities for improvement associated with the overall effort. The areas for improvement are discussed relative to an ideal vision of the future for agile enterprises. By the end of the experiment, the TAME reduced production flow time by approximately 50% and life cycle cost by more than 30%. Product performance was improved compared with conventional DOE production approaches

A performance measurement system for managing mass production and mass customisation contexts

[ENG] In supply chain/networks (SC/N) operating under a mass customisation (MC) strategy, i.e. producing customised products at a price close to that of mass production, real- time and cooperativeness receive special emphasis in order to improve customer responsiveness. The main difference between MC and Mass Production (MP) lies in their logic of operating. For MP, lower prices lead to greater sales; greater sales in higher volumes, higher volumes in lower costs, and lower cost translate into lower prices. Nevertheless, in MC, customisation leads to more satisfied customers and innovation, which both lead to greater sales and higher profits and understanding of customer needs. Thus, MP is efficiency-driven and based in economies of scale while MC is customer-driven and based on offering higher variety of products at affordable prices. This difference of logic is reflected in the processes involved in each approach. Even though both approaches, MC and MP, rely on the same processes i.e. collaborative order management, collaborative planning and scheduling processes in a SC/N context, the degree of interaction among all three processes depend on the strategy followed (MP or MC) as MC demands that all three processes react and adapt when an new customer order is received. Therefore, as both strategies differ considerably in the way they are implemented, the performance measurement systems (PMS) developed for MP need to be adapted to be used for MC. In fact, this situation is even more complex in the case where the same SC/N operates at both strategies, MP and PC, at the same time for different products. For example, in the current business environment, some enterprises usually operating under a MP approach are deciding to assign part of the available capacity of standard products (MP) to configurable products (MC). Then, PMS should evolve and integrate both approaches together in order to reflect the real situation of the SC/N. In order to deal with the management of both types of products under the same PMS, it is necessary to develop a structure that considers both situations and follows a process-based approximation to manage the processes involved. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a PMS for both contexts, called Mass Production/Mass Customisation-Performance Measurement System (MP/MC-PMS) that fills this research gap by including all three characteristics within its structure in order to provide a tool for managing the performance of MP and MP contexts more efficiently and effectively.This work has been developed within the framework of a research project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science, reference DPI2008-06788-C02-01, and title “PERMACASI- Mass Customisation through Intelligent Supply Chains, with Products of complex and changing Structure/Bill of Materials and Manufacturing Processes”

Examining the relationship between top management support, product strategies and internal support in new product development success on manufacturing firm in Malaysia

New Product Development (NPD) has become a major concern in all types of companies particularly in the manufacturing companies and its success is undeniably vital to the viability, growth and prosperity especially in today’s modern corporation. This research aimed to identify the relationships between the various factors that can generate a stream of market led and technical support for the business operation in Malaysia. The identified factors are top management support, internal and external support, product strategies and training. Through the mail survey, 250 companies have responded to the distributed questionnaires where 37.1 percent respondents were operation managers, 37.1 were marketing manager and 25.8 percent were managers in Malaysia. In this research we use SPSS to analyze the data and test of hypothesis using hierarchical regression with alpha value. However, only 229 or 91.6 percent of the responded questionnaires were usable. The respondents cover 71.2 percent of the manufacturing companies, where 28.8 percent were respondents from the electric and electronic companies. All the companies which responded were involved in product development, with a minimum of one product pattern and a maximum of five product patterns and this covers 59.8 percent of the respondents. The hypotheses used were tested by using correlation and regression techniques. The result of the study supported all the hypotheses. The multiple regression analysis indicated that there are significant relationship among the variables such as top management support, internal/external support, product strategies and training, on the usefulness of the new product development (NPD). It is believed that outcome of this study will benefit the manufacturers, government decision maker in making manufacturing policy, academician in formulating syllabus and the top management of companies into successfully implementing the new product development (NPD) and having the ability to counter any major competitions in future

Holonic supply chain:a study from family-based manufacturing perspective

In the contemporary business environment, to adhere to the need of the customers, caused the shift from mass production to mass-customization. This necessitates the supply chain (SC) to be effective flexible. The purpose of this paper is to seek flexibility through adoption of family-based dispatching rules under the influence of inventory system implemented at downstream echelons of an industrial supply chain network. We compared the family-based dispatching rules in existing literature under the purview of inventory system and information sharing within a supply chain network. The dispatching rules are compared for Average Flow Time performance, which is averaged over the three product families. The performance is measured using extensive discrete event simulation process. Given the various inventory related operational factors at downstream echelons, the present paper highlights the importance of strategically adopting appropriate family-based dispatching rule at the manufacturing end. In the environment of mass customization, it becomes imperative to adopt the family-based dispatching rule from the system wide SC perspective. This warrants the application of intra as well as inter-echelon information coordination. The holonic paradigm emerges in this research stream, amidst the holistic approach and the vital systemic approach. The present research shows its novelty in triplet. Firstly, it provides leverage to manager to strategically adopting a dispatching rule from the inventory system perspective. Secondly, the findings provide direction for the attenuation of adverse impact accruing from demand amplification (bullwhip effect) in the form of inventory levels by appropriately adopting family-based dispatching rule. Thirdly, the information environment is conceptualized under the paradigm of Koestler's holonic theory