A prescriptive approach to qualify and quantify customer value for value-based requirements engineering

Recently, customer-based product development is becoming a popular paradigm. Customer expectations and needs can be identified and transformed into requirements for product design with the help of various methods and tools. However, in many cases, these models fail to focus on the perceived value that is crucial when customers make the decision of purchasing a product. In this paper, a prescriptive approach to support value-based requirements engineering (RE) is proposed, describing the foundations, procedures and initial applications in the context of RE for commercial aircraft. An integrated set of techniques, such as means-ends analysis, part-whole analysis and multi-attribute utility theory is introduced in order to understand customer values in depth and width. Technically, this enables identifying the implicit value, structuring logically collected statements of customer expectations and performing value modelling and simulation. Additionally, it helps to put in place a system to measure customer satisfaction that is derived from the proposed approach. The approach offers significant potential to develop effective value creation strategies for the development of new product

Metodologías de diseño aplicadas al rediseño de un producto del ámbito industrial

En todo proceso industrial, las técnicas y metodologías de diseño se han fundamentado, en buena parte, en el pensamiento creativo presente en todos los procesos de la actividad humana. El objetivo de este estudio se centra en el rediseño de un objeto de uso cotidiano; se establecen unas condiciones de partida y se plantean unos objetivos ligados a una serie de resultados aportados evaluables y contrastable

Decision-making methods in engineering design: a designer-oriented approach

The use of decisional methods for the solution of engineering design problems has to be tackled on a "human" viewpoint. Hence, fundamental is the identification of design issues and needs that become a designer oriented viewpoint. Decision-based methods are systematically classified in MCDM methods, Structured Design methods and Problem Structuring methods. The results are organised in order to provide a first reference for the designer in a preliminary selection of decision-based methods. The paper shows the heterogeneous use of decision-based methods, traditionally expected to solve only some specific design problems, which have been used also in different design contexts. Moreover, several design issues, which emerged from the review process, have been pointed out and discussed accordingly. This review provided useful results for the enlargement of the state of the art on Decision Based Design methods in engineering design contexts

Integrated stakeholder analysis for effective urban flood management in a medium-sized city in China: a case study of Zhuji, Zhejiang province

Over recent decades, the stakeholder arena for urban flood management has become well recognised as being complex and dynamic. Various stakeholders are involved before, during and after a flooding event, all of which have different interests and demands. Therefore, an initial stakeholder identification and analysis stage is required before detailed stakeholder engagement strategies can be developed and employed. Drawing on urban flood management in Zhuji, a typical medium-sized city that has suffered urban flooding in China, this research project used a mixed-method research methodology within a single case-study approach to explore the current stakeholder arena for urban flood management in a medium-sized Chinese city. By combining stakeholder salience analysis with social network analysis, this study tries to create a more nuanced insight into the stakeholder arena, so that stakeholder participation in urban flood management can be improved. This thesis produces several findings. First, it provides empirical evidence to show that traditional one-dimensional stakeholder analysis methods such as the level of interest and influence; cooperation and competition; cooperation and threat; and stakeholder interest and power cannot provide an in-depth understanding of a complex and dynamic stakeholder arena, as exists for urban flood management. By way of contrast, the proposed stakeholder analysis approach, which combines both stakeholder salience and network analyses, can create a multi-dimensional understanding of urban flood management stakeholders and allows the initial problem space to be recast into a more detailed or nuanced understanding of the problems presented. This improved understanding of the stakeholder arena and the related problem space provides a more solid information foundation upon which new stakeholder and community engagement practices can be developed. Second, this thesis argues that the Mitchell et al. (1997) salience model experiences limitations in practice. Only five of the seven salience groups were identified in the present research project, with both the Dangerous and Demanding stakeholder groups missing. This indicates that the identification of urban flood management stakeholders in a medium-sized Chinese city is highly dependent on their legitimate claims. Third, the social network analysis used in this project not only explores the relationships between stakeholders, but also provides an opportunity to present other one-dimensional stakeholder attitudes. This enhancement of the data beyond one-dimensional visual representations to dynamic and interactive processes not only better assists policy-makers in developing new and improved engagement practices, it also allows engagement practitioners to educate stakeholders and interactively improve understanding of the situation among those stakeholders. This understanding, in turn, is assumed to facilitate collaborative problem solving

Early phase of the cross car beam concept development

Tese de Mestrado Integrado. Engenharia Mecânica. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 201

From Laws to Liturgy: An Idealist Interpretation of the Doctrine of Creation

Christian idealism is an interpretative framework for developing the doctrine of creation in the parallel contexts of theology and philosophy. It recommends itself by its explanatory fecundity and consilience. Against physical realism’s claim that the physical world is ontologically fundamental and mind-independent, idealism holds that it is constituted by facts about the organization of human sense experience. The sensory regularities in turn may be explained by a prephysical temporal reality of angelic minds who causally constrain human experience within a divinely decreed nomological system. Idealism is here re-attached to a tradition of Christian Platonism, recovering and updating the traditional notions of the aeon, angelic government, and the divine ideas, so as to be capable of explanatory work in regard to the philosophical problems of perception and induction. In so doing, Christian idealism enables theologians coherently to articulate the thesis that the ontological objectivity and empirical immanence of the world, as grounded in the phenomenological laws of nature, is explained by the liturgical function of the cosmic Church hierarchy. An idealist theology thus develops the doctrine of the cosmic liturgy, that the various works of God in heaven and earth are analogously unified in a single sacramental economy of the Eucharist.