Does Form follow Function? Connecting Function Modelling and Geometry Modelling for Design Space Exploration

The aerospace industry, representative of industries developing complex products, faces challenges from changes in user behaviour, legislation, environmental policy. Meeting these challenges will require the development of radically new products. Radically new technologies and solutions need to be explored, investigated, and integrated into existing aerospace component architectures. The currently available design space exploration (DSE) methods, mainly based around computer-aided design (CAD) modelling, do not provide sufficient support for this exploration. These methods often lack a representation of the product’s architecture in relation to its design rationale (DR)—they do not illustrate how form follows function. Hence, relations between different functions and solutions, as well as how novel ideas relate to the legacy design, are not captured. In particular, the connection between a product’s function and the embodiment of its solution is not captured in the applied product modelling approaches, and can therefore not be used in the product development process.To alleviate this situation, this thesis presents a combined function and geometry-modelling approach with automated generation of CAD models for variant concepts. The approach builds on enhanced function means (EF-M) modelling for representation of the design space and the legacy design’s position in it. EF-M is also used to capture novel design solutions and reference them to the legacy design’s architecture. A design automation (DA) approach based on modularisation of the CAD model, which in turn is based on the functional decomposition of the product concepts, is used to capture geometric product information. A combined function-geometry object model captures the relations between functions, solutions, and geometry. This allows for CAD models of concepts based on alternative solutions to be generated.The function- and geometry-exploration (FGE) approach has been developed and tested in collaboration with an aerospace manufacturing company. A proof-of-concept tool implementing the approach has been realised. The approach has been validated for decomposition, innovation, and embodiment of new concepts in multiple studies involving three different aerospace suppliers. Application of FGE provides knowledge capture and representation, connecting the teleological and geometric aspects of the product. Furthermore, it supports the exploration of increasingly novel solutions, enabling the coverage of a wider area of the design space.The connection between the modelling domains addresses a research gap for the “integration of function architectures with CAD models”.While the FGE approach has been tested in laboratory environments as well as in applied product development projects, further development is needed to refine CAD integration and user experience and integrate additional modelling domains

DESIGN AS A FUNCTIONAL LEADER: A case study of Philips to investigate the potential of design as a leading functional discipline

This research investigates the role of design as a functional leader in multinational industries, to drive innovation successfully at a strategic level. It involved a detailed case study of the innovation process, and practices within Philips Design based in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, where design is a key decision making function within the company but not yet recognised as a leading discipline at strategic level. Philips Design wanted to use design research to build an integrated map of its actual practices and correlate these with other corporate innovation practices, to help establish strategic recognition for their value. The doctoral challenge was to explicate the process and determine whether the findings have generic capacity to support the role of design as a functional leading discipline. The investigation integrates an iterative loop of; abductive reasoning of design thinking and inductive reasoning of management thinking in an action research cycle. The case study was part of an empirical enquiry, where the researcher became a participatory observer at Philips Design, conducting one-on-one interviews for data collection and refining their analysis using a Delphi Technique. Three other multinational organisations were explored to take into account how each perceives the contribution of design and the different roles it plays in their organisation. Data triangulation was also used to validate findings with a third party expert. The research contributes to knowledge by confirming the conditions for design to act as a leading functional discipline. It shows that design cannot be the only functional lead for a multinational organisation. It identifies the major reason for this as the difference between thinkers trying to find viable options for the future and practitioners trying to defend the core business in their organisation, resulting in a gap between strategy and operation. The research further elaborates on the reasons for the gap to exist through qualitative conceptual relationships between designer behaviour and organisational culture in the different innovation cycles that exist in the organisation

An integrated new product development model for the Turkish electronics industry

The aim of this study is to report on an integrated model of new product development (NPD) and the analysis of factors, which have a significant effect on new product development success. First, an integrated NPD model based on past research findings and suggestions of several researchers is built. A three-step model is constructed and is tested through a series of statistical tests and analysis. The data for the testing of the model is provided by an empirical study conducted in the Turkish electronics industry. Some practices for successful NPD are suggested

Mirroring or misting: On the role of product architecture, product complexity, and the rate of product component change

This paper contributes to the literature on the within-firm and across-firm mirroring hypothesis – the assumed architectural mapping between firms’ strategic choices of product architecture and firm architecture, and between firms’ architectural choices and the industry structures that emerge. Empirical evidence is both limited and mixed and there is evidently a need for a more nuanced theory that embeds not only whether the mirroring hypothesis holds, but under what product architecture and component-level conditions it may or may not hold. We invoke an industrial economics perspective to develop a stylised product architecture typology and hypothesise how the combined effects of product architecture type, product complexity and the rate of product component change may be associated with phases of mirroring or misting. Our framework helps to reconcile much existing mixed evidence and provides the foundation for further empirical research

Optimising multi-disciplinary contributions for the smart clothing development process

This research aims to introduce a strategic approach to overcome the creative boundaries and optimize multidisciplinary contributions in Smart Clothing development, since the former research results revealed that these issues are key to achieving fully integrated Smart Clothes. Therefore, this paper examines collaborative projects that are shown to break through the creative boundary and integrate multidisciplinary contributions, and identifies how individual designers overcome their creative constraints and collaborate with others, in order to identify a practical method. The research result indicates that a clear description of Smart Clothing’s context will provide a new framework for the developers to work on

Is the Industrial Product-Service System Really Sustainable

As the product-service system has shifted from its original concept to the Industrial PSS, its scope has expanded to include industrial products. Furthermore, the overall goal of reducing environmental impacts has been left behind. Despite the PSS's potential as a business model for a more sustainable production and consumption system, the mere addition of services to conventional products does not necessarily lead to a reduction of environmental impacts. This paper aims to discuss the concepts related to PSS, the need for considering environmental impact reduction as a critical issue for sustainability, and the role of ecodesign practices in the development of PSS

Design dis-integration Silent, Partial, and Disparate Design

Michael Porter’s frameworks for analysing and planning competitive differentiation (Porter 1980, 1985) are established ‘textbook’ tools, widely taught to business students today. As the claim of design’s strategic importance is increasingly heard, we ask where does design fit in established strategy thinking? This paper documents a proposed conceptual model based on Porter’s value chain model for strategic planning. The concept outlined is the result of the first stage of a larger study of design’s potential role at strategic level and the difficulties faced by organisations in exploiting design strategically. This exploratory phase comprised a review of literature on design management and models of strategy, followed by nineteen interviews with senior design professionals. These then informed a novel revision of the value chain diagram reflecting the strategic role of design, and the identification of three key phenomena concerning design integration (silent design, partial design and disparate design). These phenomena are also represented in modified versions of the value chain. This overall project follows a research approach based on the design research method and on procedural action research, and aims to develop a tool or method to help organisations increase design integration. This project is ongoing, and the results will be published separately. Keywords: Strategic; value chain; silent; partial; disparate; integrated</p