Workshops for integral design of innovative roofs

Traditionally, the installation of accessories on roofs is the domain of roofers, having the traditional knowledge and experience of successful mounting and integrating existing roof products in both new and renovated roofs. In the current roofing situation, many new products are added to the building design and building process. As a result many problems occurred, resulting in poor quality, unsafe working conditions and high repair costs. Today there is a need from the roofers for a more active role not only in the constructing process, but also in the design process; Collaborative Engineering. The active role for the roofer is therefore related to the several aspects of the context in which the roofer has to participate. The result should lead to innovative roofs, roofs that are producing sustainable energy and are active in the interaction with the thermal environment. First experiments to find a format for supporting Design Collaboration, started in 2004 with workshops for design- teams including participants with the same educational background. In 2005, a first set up was done for design teams with participants with different educational backgrounds. These workshops are coupling a concrete task from practice and research focusing on the roofs where there is a lack of innovative designs, caused by a sub-optimal interaction between solutions and application in design practice. The process where actors from different disciplines work together to develop a (new) product is called Collaborative Engineering (CE). Workshops are used to offer a collaborative context to professionals and to determine in steps an adaptive method to analyse and improve the design collaboration related to knowledge exchange. The project, as part of the European 6th framework research EURACTIVE ROOFer, resulted in a series of workshops for architects and roofers to develop active roofs for integral sustainable comfort (HVAC)- system design, engineering and installation. The workshops gave first insights into the knowledge exchange and knowledge development between the participants. This paper describes the methodical backgrounds, the set-up of the EURACTIVE ROOFer-workshop and first results related to the knowledge management aspects

DETC2006-99149 AN AGENT-BASED APPROACH TO COLLABORATIVE PRODUCT DESIGN

ABSTRACT The growth of computer science and technology has brought new opportunities for multidisciplinary designers and engineers to collaborate with each other in a concurrent and coordinated manner. The development of computational agents with unified data structures and software protocols can contribute to the establishment of a new way of working in collaborative design, which is increasingly becoming an international practice. In this paper, we first propose a computational model of collaborative product design management aiming to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the cooperation and coordination among participating disciplines. Then, we present a new framework of collaborative design which adopts an agent-based approach and relocates designers, managers, systems, and supporting agents in a unified knowledge representation scheme for product design. An agent-based system is now being implemented and the design of a set of dinning table and chairs is chosen to demonstrate how the system can help designers in the management and coordination of the collaborative product design process. INTORDUCTION Increasing product complexity, explosive global competition, and rapidly changing customer's demands are forcing product manufacturers to improve the efficiency of design decision-making and shrink design cycle times. Advances in the computer science and technology have opened new opportunities for multidisciplinary designers and engineers to collaborative with each other more efficiently and effectively. Collaborative design can create added value in the design and production process by bringing the benefit of team work and cooperation in a concurrent and coordinated manner. Also, it help reduce the loss of efficiency resulted from potential conflicts and misunderstandings among team members. However, the difficulties arising from the requirements for design coordination mixed with differences among heterogeneous system architectures and information structures tend to undermine the effectiveness and the success of collaborative design among multidisciplinary designers. Recently, agent technology has been recognized by more and more researchers as a promising approach to analyzing, designing, and implementing industrial distributed systems. An intelligent agent consists of self-contained knowledge-based systems capable of perceiving, reasoning, adapting, learning, cooperating, and delegating in a dynamic environment to tackle specialist problems. The way in which intelligent software agents residing in a multi-agent system interact and cooperate with one another to achieve a common goal is similar to the way that human designers collaborate with each other to carry out a product design project. Thus, we believe that a collaborative product design environment implemented by taking an agentbased approach will be capable of assisting human designers or design teams effectively and efficiently in collaborative product design. In this paper, based on the analysis of the characteristics of a collaborative design process, we first propose a computational model of collaborative product design management to improve

Modified Stage-Gate: A Conceptual Model of Virtual Product Development Process

In today s dynamic marketplace, manufacturing companies are under strong pressure to introduce new products for long-term survival with their competitors. Nevertheless, every company cannot cope up progressively or immediately with the market requirements due to knowledge dynamics being experienced in the competitive milieu. Increased competition and reduced product life cycles put force upon companies to develop new products faster. In response to these pressing needs, there should be some new approach compatible in flexible circumstances. This paper presents a solution based on the popular Stage-Gate system, which is closely linked with virtual team approach. Virtual teams can provide a platform to advance the knowledge-base in a company and thus to reduce time-to-market. This article introduces conceptual product development architecture under a virtual team umbrella. The paper describes all the major aspects of new product development (NPD), NPD process and its relationship with virtual teams, Stage-Gate system finally presents a modified Stage-Gate system to cope up with the changing needs. It also provides the guidelines for the successful implementation of virtual teams in new product development.Comment: 24 page

Digital information support for concept design

This paper outlines the issues in effective utilisation of digital resources in conceptual design. Access to appropriate information acts as stimuli and can lead to better substantiated concepts. This paper addresses the issues of presenting such information in a digital form for effective use, exploring digital libraries and groupware as relevant literature areas, and argues that improved integration of these two technologies is necessary to better support the concept generation task. The development of the LauLima learning environment and digital library is consequently outlined. Despite its attempts to integrate the designers' working space and digital resources, continuing issues in library utilisation and migration of information to design concepts are highlighted through a class study. In light of this, new models of interaction to increase information use are explored

A framework for design engineering education in a global context

This paper presents a framework for teaching design engineering in a global context using innovative technologies to enable distributed teams to work together effectively across international and cultural boundaries. The DIDET Framework represents the findings of a 5-year project conducted by the University of Strathclyde, Stanford University and Olin College which enhanced student learning opportunities by enabling them to partake in global, team based design engineering projects, directly experiencing different cultural contexts and accessing a variety of digital information sources via a range of innovative technology. The use of innovative technology enabled the formalization of design knowledge within international student teams as did the methods that were developed for students to store, share and reuse information. Coaching methods were used by teaching staff to support distributed teams and evaluation work on relevant classes was carried out regularly to allow ongoing improvement of learning and teaching and show improvements in student learning. Major findings of the 5 year project include the requirement to overcome technological, pedagogical and cultural issues for successful eLearning implementations. The DIDET Framework encapsulates all the conclusions relating to design engineering in a global context. Each of the principles for effective distributed design learning is shown along with relevant findings and suggested metrics. The findings detailed in the paper were reached through a series of interventions in design engineering education at the collaborating institutions. Evaluation was carried out on an ongoing basis and fed back into project development, both on the pedagogical and the technological approaches

Modified Stage-Gate: A Conceptual Model of Virtual Product Development Process

In today’s dynamic marketplace, manufacturing companies are under strong pressure to introduce new products for long-term survival with their competitors. Nevertheless, every company cannot cope up progressively or immediately with the market requirements due to knowledge dynamics being experienced in the competitive milieu. Increased competition and reduced product life cycles put force upon companies to develop new products faster. In response to these pressing needs, there should be some new approach compatible in flexible circumstances. This paper presents a solution based on the popular Stage-Gate system, which is closely linked with virtual team approach. Virtual teams can provide a platform to advance the knowledge-base in a company and thus to reduce time-to-market. This article introduces conceptual product development architecture under a virtual team umbrella. The paper describes all the major aspects of new product development (NPD), NPD process and its relationship with virtual teams, Stage-Gate system finally presents a modified Stage-Gate system to cope up with the changing needs. It also provides the guidelines for the successful implementation of virtual teams in new product development

SMEs: ERP or virtual collaboration teams

Small firms are indeed the engines of global economic growth. Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) play an important role to promote economic development. SMEs in the beginning of implementing new technologies always face capital shortage and need technological assistance. Available ERP systems do not fulfil the specific requirements of Small firms. SMEs has scarce resources and manpower therefore many SMEs don?t have the possessions to buy and operate an ERP System. On the other hand competition and competitiveness of SMEs have to be strengthened. This paper briefly reviews the existing perspectives on virtual teams and their effect on SMEs management. It also discusses the main characteristics of virtual teams and clarifies the differences aspects of virtual team application in SMEs. After outlining some of the main advantages and pitfall of such teams, it concentrates on comparing of ERP and virtual collaborative teams in SMEs. Finally, it provides evidence for the need of ?Software as a Service (SaaS)? where an application is hosted as a service provided to customers across the web for SMEs as an alternative of ERP. It has been widely argued that ERP disadvantage in SMEs such as administrative expenditure and cost, isolated structure, severe lack of software flexibility, insufficient support of SMEs business and high operating cost, lead SMEs to use virtual collaborative team which is net work base solution

A Service based Development Environment on Web 2.0 Platforms

Governments are investing on the IT adoption and promoting the socalled e-economies as a way to improve competitive advantages. One of the main government’s actions is to provide internet access to the most part of the population, people and organisations. Internet provides the required support for connecting organizations, people and geographically distributed developments teams. Software developments are tightly related to the availability of tools and platforms needed for products developments. Internet is becoming the most widely used platform. Software forges such as SourceForge provide an integrated tools environment gathering a set of tools that are suited for each development with a low cost. In this paper we propose an innovating approach based on Web2.0, services and a method engineering approach for software developments. This approach represents one of the possible usages of the internet of the future

Collaborative design : managing task interdependencies and multiple perspectives

This paper focuses on two characteristics of collaborative design with respect to cooperative work: the importance of work interdependencies linked to the nature of design problems; and the fundamental function of design cooperative work arrangement which is the confrontation and combination of perspectives. These two intrinsic characteristics of the design work stress specific cooperative processes: coordination processes in order to manage task interdependencies, establishment of common ground and negotiation mechanisms in order to manage the integration of multiple perspectives in design