Developing modular product family using GeMoCURE within an SME

Companies adopt the strategy of producing variety of products to be competitive and responsive to market. Product variation is becoming an important factor in companies' ability to accurately meet customer requirements. Ever increasing consumer options mean that customers have more choices than ever before which put commercial pressures on companies to continue to diversify. This can be a particular problem within Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs) who do not always have the level of resources to meet these requirements. As such, methods are required that provide means for companies to be able to produce a wide range of products at the lowest cost and shortest time. This paper details a new modular product design methodology that provides a focus on developing modular product families. The methodology's function is described and a case study detailed of how it was used within an SME to define the company's product portfolio and create a new Generic Product Function Structure from which a new family of product variants can be developed. The methodology lends itself to modular re-use which has the potential to support rapid development and configuration of product variants

Specification and Verification of Distributed Embedded Systems: A Traffic Intersection Product Family

Distributed embedded systems (DESs) are no longer the exception; they are the rule in many application areas such as avionics, the automotive industry, traffic systems, sensor networks, and medical devices. Formal DES specification and verification is challenging due to state space explosion and the need to support real-time features. This paper reports on an extensive industry-based case study involving a DES product family for a pedestrian and car 4-way traffic intersection in which autonomous devices communicate by asynchronous message passing without a centralized controller. All the safety requirements and a liveness requirement informally specified in the requirements document have been formally verified using Real-Time Maude and its model checking features.Comment: In Proceedings RTRTS 2010, arXiv:1009.398

A Palladium-Catalyzed Vinylcyclopropane (3 + 2) Cycloaddition Approach to the Melodinus Alkaloids

A palladium-catalyzed (3 + 2) cycloaddition of a vinylcyclopropane and a β-nitrostyrene is employed to rapidly assemble the cyclopentane core of the Melodinus alkaloids. The ABCD ring system of the natural product family is prepared in six steps from commercially available materials

Design of a second life product family from the perspective of the remanufacturing agent

This thesis presents a method of solving a newly posed Second Life Product Family Design problem. This is unique in that the architecture of the product is not speci ed to be identical to one of the recaptured products, rather it is determined through optimization. The problem is framed using Conjoint Analysis and the Multi Nomial Logit Model, formatted with respect to components available for inclusion in the nal products and then solved using an implementation of Genetic Algorithms. The solution method is also encapsulated in a software module which can be disseminated to industrial users without a background in optimization or familiarity with Genetic Algorithms. A case study is performed to determine the e ectiveness of the proposed solution method, and analyze the in uences di erent market conditions and component similarities can have on the optimal design. It is concluded that the proposed method converges to an optimal Second Life Product Family Design

Estimating life cycle cost for a product family design: The challenges

A cost estimation system is required to assist in designing a product family. The aim of this paper is to identify the requirements and the problems in estimating the life cycle cost of a product family. Then, this paper also presents the state-of-the-art and the research challenges in developing a life cycle cost estimation system for a product family design. As the conclusion, the life cycle cost estimation process for a product family still needs to face the challenges to determine the end of life strategy of each sub module of a product family, to integrate the end of life strategy to estimate the life cycle cost of a product family, to estimate the life cycle cost of each component level of a product family for design purposes and for different technologies and approaches, to reduce the required time and effort for updating process in estimating the life cycle cost for different structures of different product families, and to transform the available information into the required information in order to estimate the life cycle cost of a product family at the early stage of product development

Maturity Assessment Framework for Business Dimension of Software Product Family

The software product family approach aims at curtailing the concept of “reinventing the wheel” in the software development process. The business has been highlighted as one of the critical dimensions in the process of software product family. This work presents an assessment framework for evaluating the business dimension of software product family process. Additionally, a software product family business evaluation tool has been designed and implemented on the basis of the presented framework. The tool preprocesses the data of key business factors, and it evaluates the overall business maturity of an organization. To demonstrate the application of the framework, and to determine the current software product family business performance, we conducted a case study of an organization actively involved in the business of software product family. The framework and the tool provide direct mechanisms to evaluate the current maturity level of software product family business of an organization. This research is a contribution towards establishing a comprehensive and unified strategy for a process evaluation of the software product family

Improving cross-functional communication about product architecture

Product architecture decisions, such as product modularity, component commonality, and design reuse, are important for balancing costs, responsiveness, quality, and other important business objectives. Firms are challenged with complex tradeoffs between competing design priorities, face the need to facilitate communication between functional silos, and to learn from past experiences. In this paper we present a qualitative approach for systematically evaluating the product architecture of an existing product or product family, linking the original architecture objectives and actual experiences. The intended contribution of our research is to present a framework that brings together a diverse set of product architecture-related decisions that are relevant from a business point of view (and not from a technical point of view) and a set of business performance elements. This framework can be used in workshop that improves cross-functional communication about the product architecture of an existing product family, and this results in practical improvement actions for future architecture design projects. Initial experiences with this approach have been obtained in pilots with Philips domestic appliances & personal care, and Philips consumer electronics