Introducing systems engineering to industrial design engineering students with hands-on experience

The article presents an innovative educational project to introduce systems engineering to third year students in industrial design engineering at the University of Twente. In a short period the students are confronted with new technology, namely sensors and actuators. They have to apply this technology in a complex situation, the design of a home climate system or an intelligent automobile. They work in large groups without tutor. In parallel a basic course on systems engineering is given to provide the students with tools for handling this situation. The aim is that students are forced to apply the systems engineering tools in a concrete situation, thus directly experiencing the benefits. The project is implemented and the article describes the context, the goals, the setup, and the experiences of both teachers and students. The article concludes with an evaluation of the first and second year it has been executed

Communication: key factor in multidisciplinary system design

System design research often looks at ways to model the system that is developing. Many modelling techniques and model representations exist. Another aspect these models can be used for is to enable, facilitate and improve communication among the developers during the process. The young System Design Group at the faculty of Engineering Technology of the University of Twente, the Netherlands, aims at focusing on this communication aspect in system design.\ud In the paper, a few finished and running projects undertaken in close cooperation with industry are described concisely. From these projects three research themes are derived. These are: creation of high-level models, combining model representations and condense information. The paper ends with plans for future research

Domain Integration and Cost Reduction in Electronic Product Design: a case study

This publication discusses domain integration of various engineering disciplines as an effective methodology to design new, innovative products or to upgrade existing ones. A case study illustrates how this approach is applied to the design process of a high performance electronic product. Thanks to newly developed cooling technologies, fewer constraints are put on the location of heat dissipating components with respect to their heat exchanger. This allows for more overall design flexibility, which can result in a more integrated product design with advantages in terms of performance, volume, weight and production efficienc

Applying Universal Linking of Engineering Objects in the Automotive Industry:Practical Aspects, Benefits, and Prototypes

The bi-directional communication of CAD programs with subsequent applications such as process planning remains a key challenge in design-for-the-lifecycle. While it seems sensible that individual applications use their own collection of feature types and thereby allow users to have their specific perspective of the product, it is still difficult to automatically close the gap between the variety of applications. Universal Linking of Engineering Objects (ULEO) targets this concern. It is general enough to facilitate informational integration of the applications along the process chain. This paper examines a number of scenarios for exploiting ULEO’s benefits in the field of automotive development and reports on the associated prototypical software implementations. Principle alternatives and technical aspects relevant for applying ULEO are discussed in some detail beforehand

Towards Decision-support for Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems Based on Computational Design Synthesis

AbstractThe efficiency of production systems largely influences the profitability in the automotive industry. Recent trends challenge traditional manufacturing concepts and promote the adoption of more flexible approaches. Reconfigurable manufacturing systems have key characteristics that make them a potential solution for the prevalent issues. Decision makers can change the configuration of the manufacturing system to respond to changing requirements, though they are confronted with a large solution space. A case from industry illustrates the need for support of design decisions in this domain. Computational Design Synthesis generates an overview of the solution space and supports the decision maker in exploring the generated range by making trade-offs for many key performance indicators concurrently by generating sets of feasible solutions that can later be narrowed down by design constraints. Therefore, an investigation is proposed that explores the role of Computational Design Synthesis tools to support decision-making in the design of reconfigurable manufacturing systems and to show potential benefits. Furthermore, research questions are shown that are relevant for the development of such a tool and a suitable research methodology is suggested

Design and management of reconfigurable assembly lines in the automotive industry

Automotive suppliers are facing the challenge of continuously adapting their production targets to variable demand requirements due to the frequent introduction of new model variants, materials and assembly technologies. In this context, the profitable management of the product, process and system co-evolution is of paramount importance for the company competitiveness. In this paper, a methodology for the design and reconfiguration management of modular assembly systems is proposed. It addresses the selection of the technological modules, their integration in the assembly cell, and the reconfiguration policies to handle volume and lot size variability. The results are demonstrated in a real automotive case study. (C) 2016 CIRP

Integration of process knowledge into design support systems

Design is a fundamental creative human activity. This certainly applies to the design of artefacts, the realisation of which has to meet many constraints and ever raising criteria. The world in which we live today, is enormously influenced by the human race. Over the last century, these artefacts have dramatically changed the living conditions of humans. The present wealth in very large parts of the world, depends on it. All the ideas for better and new artefacts brought forward by humans have gone through the minds of designers, who have turned them into feasible concepts and subsequently transformed them into realistic product models. The designers have been, still are, and will remain the leading 'change agents' in the physical world