18 research outputs found
Addressing product-service manufacturing in globalised markets: an industrial case study
Product-service (P-S) represents an interesting business trend for manufacturing enterprises to push innovation since it allows increasing the value perceived by the customers and better satisfying their needs over time by adding a wide range of services to a physical product. In this context understanding how to configure the global design and production network in order to realize a P-S solution and properly reconfigure the processes against rapidly changing of P-S requirements is a complex problem area. For this purpose new methods are necessary to deal with the complex, dynamic and transient nature of product- services and create a dynamic global network able to effectively manage the flexible design and production requirements demanded by the increasing business need for rapid P-S change. The research presents an industrial case study focusing on a manufacturing company facing the configuration of its production network in order to provide a new P-S idea and innovate its actual product portfolio. In particular, the study defines a methodology to elicit the P-S network configuration requirements and support the P-S introduction in a traditional manufacturing scenario. By using such a method the company is able to define a solution to plan and configure the required network in case of P-S production and organize the partners and the interactions among them
Assessing sustainability and supporting compliance to standards in continuous industrial processes
Nowadays, companies need to develop sustainable solutions to be competitive and to respect international standards. It means producing products compliant to target costs, impacts and risks, as well as exploiting sustainable processes. This is particularly challenging for those processes requiring a large consumption of energy, which have high environmental and economic impacts. In this paper the industrial process of plastic material extrusion is considered and analysed. Indeed, it is a highly energy-consuming process that requires monitoring the energy consumption and controlling the process parameters to increase the sustainability and assure the respect of standards. The research is based on lifecycle design (LCD) and sustainable manufacturing principles. The proposed method aims at improving the extrusion process sustainability by identifying the more energy-consuming phases and evaluating the impact of manufacturing process items on the achievement of target values. The industrial case study demonstrates how such a method supports sustainability optimisation and compliance to standards
Sustainable product-service design in manufacturing industry
The interest of manufacturing enterprises in Product-Service (P-S) is growing; indeed, the transition from selling traditional products to proposing product-service integrated solutions can bring a new strategic advantage and consequently greater earnings. It is particularly challenging for manufacturing companies. However, the majority of manufacturing enterprises is still far to propose P-S solutions ready for the market because they are strongly focusing on the product: as a consequence, they are not well organized for service design, they adopt product-centred design approaches, and finally they lack of structural methods and tools to guide P-S design
Functional and ecosystem requirements to design sustainable P-S
Product-Service (P-S) represents an innovative way to create highly sustainable solutions for both large and small enterprises. However, very few works propose structured approaches for P-S ideation and design in manufacturing industry. This paper presents a novel methodology to support ideation and preliminary design of sustainable P-S solutions within industrial chains involving Large Enterprises (LEs) as well as Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). It is based on a matrix-based approach and allows defining the P-S functional and ecosystem requirements according to the customer needs and sustainability principles. The research purpose is twofold: to effectively support industrial chains in P-S requirements elicitation, and to verify the benefits of P-S integration from the design stages in developing sustainable solutions. The research study involved an Italian company with its supply chains of SMEs, distributed in Europe, and aims at developing a new P-S idea in the white goods sector by exploiting Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)
Design for sustainability of product-service systems in the extended enterprise
A recent trend in modern manufacturing companies is moving from products to services. Indeed, services allow creating new business opportunities and increasing the value perceived by the customers. At the same time, sustainability is a crucial aspect for industry, which pays more and more attention to realize efficient and sustainable solutions. The research challenge is defining a structured methodology to understand how to design for sustainability considering Product Service Systems (PSS) and evaluating the effect of shifting from products to services. While product sustainability can be assessed by several tools, sustainability of PSS is almost unexplored. Furthermore, PSS requires creating an extended value creation network. This paper defines an integrated product-service lifecycle and proposes a methodology to identify a set of KPIs for both PSS and products and to compare different use scenarios. It adopts a holistic approach to assess sustainability on the basis of the three main impacts: environmental, economical and social. The methodology is illustrated by means of an industrial case study focusing on water heaters; it analyses an innovative PSS “Hot water as a Service” supported by an extended network, and compares it with the traditional scenario based on product selling supported by a vertical supply-chain. The final aim is to evaluate the service benefits and to support company decision-making
A distributed system for traceability and sustainability assessment of leather shoe supply chains
An approach for managing engineering changes in product families
Product development is characterized by continuous updating of existing solutions in order to cope with new market requirements. Families of product variants are used to satisfy the needs of new potential customers and penetrate new market niches. New requirements impact on the structure of a product to be changed and also on the other instances of the family which share common parts. Several change management approaches have been proposed in the literature but they are limited to analysis of a single product instance. This paper proposes a dependency-based change propagation approach which is able to cope with engineering changes extended to product families. The proposed tool is based on a multilevel representation of the product structure, where functions, modules and physical parts are defined and interrelated. This system allows evaluating the consequences of engineering changes introduced in the family structure and computing indices of the impact on several design for X contexts. The tool was tested within the R&D department of a large sized company producing household appliances. Gather data are presented and analyzed to identify potentialities and shortcomings of the approach
Development of a methodology based on industrial environment simulation to optimise the heating energy consumption
Over the last years, industrial companies have started to use simulation software to evaluate their energy performance. Today, the main researchers are focusing on the process energy consumption, but there is a lack in the indirect energy optimization such as ventilation and heating and a lack in the use of the simulation results as a practical feedback for energy manager. The focus of this paper is the study and the development of an approach based on the industrial environment simulation to optimize the thermal energy consumption related to the heating industrial building. To validate the proposed approach a test in a real industrial case is conducted
A QFD-based methodology to support Product- Service design in manufacturing industry
Recently manufacturing enterprises are challenged by the transition from product-centered solutions to the new concept of Product-Service System (PSS). However, designing a new PSS implies the definition of new specifications and the integration of the necessary assets to create a coherent system. This paper presents a QFD-based methodology to support manufacturing companies moving from products to services by focusing on product-service design. It starts from the analysis of the target market and customer needs, and correlates them with the functionalities and with the assets offered by the company ecosystem. The method is validated on a real case study where a white goods producer wants to innovate its business by service-based solution. Assets are virtualized and selected with the final scope to design a highly sustainable PSS. The case study considers the design of a predictive maintenance service for dryers, which includes the product enhanced with advanced HW and SW components, a remote service for product monitoring and data elaboration, and a web / mobile application for customer interaction and service provisioning