Component-based records: a novel method to record transaction design work

The growing pressures from global competitive markets signal the inevitable challenge for companies to rapidly design and develop new successful products. To continually improve design quality and efficiency, companies must consider how to speed design processes, minimise human-errors, avoid unnecessary iterations, and sustain knowledge embedded in the design process. All of these issues strongly concern one topic: how to make and exploit records of design activities. Using process modelling ideas, this paper introduces a new method called component-based records, in place of traditional design reports. The proposed method records transaction elements of the actual design processes undertaken in a design episode, which aims to continually improve design quality and efficiency, reduce designers’ workload for routine tasks, and sustain competitiveness of companies

A decision support framework for sustainable supply chain management

Sustainable Supply Chain Management has become a topic of increased importance within the research domain. There is a greater need than ever before for companies to be able to assess and make informed decisions about their sustainability in the Supply Chains. There is a proliferation of research about its understanding and how to implement it in practice. This is mainly since sustainability has been assessed from various disciplines, organizational industries and organizational functional silos . There is a lack of comprehension, unified definition and appropriate implementation of Sustainable Supply Chain Management (SSCM), leading to failure in decision making for sustainability implementation within supply chains. The proposed research identifies the research gaps through the novel application of Systematic Literature Network Analysis (SLNA) to SSCM literature. In doing so, methods including Systematic Literature Review (SLR), Citation Network Analysis (CNA) and Citation Network Mapping of literature have been used to identify definitions, KPIs, barriers and drivers of SSCM from the literature. Furthermore, a combination of methods from Text Mining and Content Analysis has been used to identify KPIs, barriers and drivers from sustainability reports of top global manufacturing companies, to better understand the practices of organizations for SSCM. The consolidation of the findings from literature and practice led to the development of an SSCM Performance Evaluation Framework built on multiple methods. A 4-level hierarchical model has been developed by classifying the identified KPIs into Economic, Environment and Social as well as considering the key decision areas including tactical, strategic and operational. Furthermore, a rigorous data collection process was conducted among supply chain and sustainability managers from top global manufacturing firms and leading academicians in the field, assessing the identified SSCM KPIs. The collected data were analyzed through novel application of hybrid Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) methods, which includes Values Focused Thinking (VFT), Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchical Process (FAHP), Fuzzy Technique of Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (FTOPSIS) and Total Interpretive Structural Modelling (TISM), for prioritizing and modelling of interdependencies, interactions and weightages among SSCM KPIs. The results obtained were subsequently used to develop a Decision Support System (DSS) that allows managers to evaluate their sustainability by identifying problem areas and yielding guidance on the KPIS and most important areas to focus on for SSCM implementation. The application of DSS has been demonstrated in the context of a case company. From a theoretical development point of view, a Tree perspective framework contributing to the ecological Theory of Sustainability has been proposed through the identification of the most influential organizational theories, and how they interrelate with each other. Overall, the proposed research provides a holistic perspective of SSCM that incorporates the various aspects of organizations, relevant organizational theories and perspectives of academics and practitioners together. The proposed DSS may act as a guiding tool for managers and practitioners for SSCM implementation in companies

A descriptive design methodology to support designers

An engineering design methodology helps designers to design in a systematic way. Based on the findings from a literature review, engineering design methodologies can be categorised into three types: prescriptive, descriptive and normative. Most established design methodologies are of the prescriptive type and they are based on step-oriented models. However, designers in industry are not found to be too keen on using any of these design methodologies. Among the reasons for not adopting these methodologies are that the prescriptive and normative design methodologies were found to be influencing the design strategies and approaches of a designer while the descriptive types were mostly used to study the design process. Though designers have their own design strategies and approaches, they also need design support. The descriptive type will not interfere with the designer’s strategies but they do suffer from a lack of structure in supporting designers. The goal of this research is to derive a design methodology framework to support designers without influencing their design approaches and strategies. A descriptive design methodology framework to support designers is proposed in this research work. This framework was derived based on four aspects: a descriptive type based on a function-oriented model, the types of support facilities that can be provided, identification of critical design factors as design parameters for the framework and lastly, the adaptation of the Ishikawa fishbone diagram to represent the framework. The novel descriptive design methodology was applied in two case studies: the first with an experienced designer without using any design methods and second, with a novice designer adopting a design approach based on the step-oriented model. The second case study included an additional design tool based on TRIZ to verify the effectiveness of the novel descriptive design methodology working with other tools. The designers’ feedback and observations from these both case studies showed that the novel descriptive design methodology was able to support designers in many ways. In particular it was able to accommodate different design approaches and strategies without influencing the designer, providing both methodology-related and computational-platform related support facilities as well as working in a complementary way with other design tools