LEAP Product and Manufacturing Design Support System

The aim of this chapter is to show the development of the so-called "LEAP model for design support." The introduction highlights the importance of pursuing a product life cycle approach during the design phase, in order to gain economic and environmental impact savings. We use the life cycle costing and life cycle assessment methodologies, which we will define and criticize. In the light of the gaps identified, this chapter presents the life cycle optimization model, highlighting its development and implementation. We will also describe a first application in the industrial context, referred to as the COMAU use case. Finally, our conclusion summarizes the results and suggests possible extensions of the model

Towards a Reference Procedure for Designing and Modelling a PSS in the Automotive Industry

Nowadays, PSS lifecycle models are a crucial issue. The management of both the product and the service lifecycle together is recent: to date, there is no evidence of an accepted and operational combined lifecycle model. Furthermore, PSS lifecycle models are based on top-down approach, which are not always suitable from an engineering point of view. The aim of this paper is to propose a reference procedure, built on a bottom-up methodology, for the designing and modeling of PSSs and its lifecycles, applied to the automotive sector

State of the art of technology in the food sector value chain towards the IoT

The food sector is challenged to provide safe and qualitative food to consumers at affordable price and to feed appropriately increasing population using natural resources, like soil and water, in a sustainable way. Consumers awareness about food origin, nutritional and wellness properties, attention to processed meals ingredients, due to health issues, and requests of new customized portions formats and receipts, related to habits changes, are also demanding trends in the sector. Several technologies can help to address those responsibilities of efficient, safe and environmental respectful production, and strict communication and connection with the consumers. This paper provides a state of the art of smart and other emerging technologies framed in the whole food supply-chain, to create a picture of the added value that the technology can bring to the sector. Moreover, the evolutions towards the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm adoption are presented

Identifying and Assessing the Required I4.0 Skills for Manufacturing Companies’ Workforce

Nowadays, the diffusion of digital and industry 4.0 (I4.0) technologies is affecting the manufacturing sector with a twofold effect. While on one side it represents the boost fastening the competitive advantage of companies, on the other hand it is often accompanied by several challenges that companies need to face. Among all, companies are required to invest in technologies to empower their production activities on the shopfloor without lagging behind their workforce in order to undertake a linear, aware, and structured path toward digitization. The extant literature presents some research conducted to support companies toward digitization, and they usually rely on maturity models in this intention. Nevertheless, few studies included the assessment of workforce skills and competencies in the overall assessment, and in this case, they provide a high level perspective of the investigation, mainly based on check lists which may limit the objectivity of the assessment, and usually they do not customize the assessment based on companies’ requirements. Therefore, considering the importance to balance investments in technologies with those in the workforce to move toward the same direction, this contribution aims to develop a structured, customizable, and objective skill assessment model. With this intention, it has been first clarified the set of job profiles required in I4.0, together with the needed related skills based on the extant literature findings; second, it has been identified the set of key criteria to be considered while performing the assessment of the workforce; third, it has been defined the method to be integrated in the maturity model to enable the initial setting of the weights of the criteria identified according to the company needs; and fourth, based on these findings, it has been developed the assessment model. The developed model facilitates the elaboration of the proper workforce improvement plans to be put in practice to support the improvement of the skills of the whole workforce based on company’s needs

How Lean Thinking affects Product Service Systems Development Process

PSS development involves together, through the servitization phenomenon, both manufacturing and service workers carrying great potential to pursue industrial competitiveness, customer satisfaction and sustainable improvement. The belief is that the development level of PSS design is slowly evolving through a path strongly driven by the evolution of the technology and the progressive involvement of the industry in its application. However companies still need best practices able to improve the PSS development processes performances in a more systematic way. Lean techniques already managed to provide these procedures in a product context allowing the improvement of both product manufacturing and product development processes. The evolution of Lean to an intangible dimension also guided companies' convergence strategy from mass production to mass customization in an efficient and effective way. For this reasons the paper aims to investigate the literature about Lean Thinking evolvement from manufacturing to design phases, as well as from product to service. On this basis, the definition of which are Lean Thinking aspects which could positively affect also PSSs Development will enable the authors to understand which are the more suitable tools to develop Lean PSS and how to provide companies best practices able to improve the PSS development processes performances in a more systematic way. This opens the way to new opportunities and challenges through many further research and industrial projects

New Product Development in the Fashion Industry: An Empirical Investigation of Italian Firms

This paper investigates how companies in the fashion industry organize, plan and perform their New Product Development process (NPD). The results have been achieved through an empirical study carried out by the authors with the support of the GeCo Observatory, an Italian research initiative launched in 2012. This paper shows the details of eight selected case studies from the Italian fashion industry

Engineering and Design Best Practices in New Product Development: an Empirical Research

Nowadays companies are subject to pressuring and challenging calls for innovation. New Product Development (NPD) becomes a crucial function for competitiveness, survival and prosperity. In order to deliver products successfully, companies can choose between a vast amount of best practices to apply in their innovation processes. This paper proposes a classification framework of prevalent NPD best practices obtained through literature investigation and focus groups with experts. Moreover, this study presents a research conducted in 2012 and 2013 across 103 companies based in Italy, with the aim to understand the level of implementation of the proposed framework of NPD best practices. Finally, starting from the analysis of the collected data, the paper contributes to the ongoing debate about the contingency of best practices: since one size doesn’t fit all, is it correct to talk about best practices in general or should we start considering them context dependent? Data demonstrates that moving research towards this direction makes definitely sense

Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipments versus End of Life Vehicles: a state of the art analysis and quantification of potential profits

AbstractWaste Electrical and Electronic Equipments (WEEEs) and End of Life Vehicles (ELVs) are two of the main waste streams, after municipal solid wastes, both in volumes and growth rates terms. Even if their management begins to be adequately regulated almost worldwide, there are still clear lacks to be solved in many aspects. The aim of this paper is the comparison, through a structured literature analysis, of these waste streams under several perspectives, by evidencing current differences and potential commonalities. In addition, a quantification of potential profits rising from a joined management of different sources of PCBs is described in the last part of the paper

The impact of IoT technologies on product-oriented PSS: The 'home delivery' service case

The contribution aims to evaluate the impact that IoT technologies can have on PSS and services. Particularly, the analysis considers two dimensions: the typology of services enabled by the IoT, and the PSS lifecycle phases of the home delivery. By means of multiple use cases, authors found out that IoT technologies have huge impacts both on order placement and delivery phases. Particularly, they have a two-fold advantage for the main stakeholders involved: on one side they speed up operations and on the other they reduce the number of activities for completing the overall home delivery process