Knowledge Base Repository
In addition to research papers, the Design Society is developing several valuable resources for those interested in the study of design. These include a repository of PhD theses, a library of case studies and transcripts of design activities, and an archive of our newsletters. Please note that these resources are accessible exclusively to Design Society members.
SUPPORTING THE CONFIGURATION OF NEW PRODUCT VARIANTS BY REUSING THE IMPLICIT KNOWLEDGE OF PAST SOLUTIONS
Malatesta, Marco; Cicconi, Paolo; Raffaeli, Roberto; Germani, Michele
Type:
Year:
2015
Editor:
Christian Weber, Stephan Husung, Marco CantaMESsa, Gaetano Cascini, Dorian Marjanovic, Srinivasan Venkataraman
Author:
Series:
ICED
Institution:
1: Università Politecnica delle Marche, Italy; 2: Università degli Studi eCampus, Italy
Section:
Design Information and Knowledge Management
Page(s):
199-208
ISBN:
978-1-904670-73-5
ISSN:
2220-4334
Abstract:
The market globalization pushes for ever new products in order to reach new niches. In the household appliances field, the marketing specialists daily configure new combinations of numerous functional and product requirements seeking new product definitions. Each novel combination requires an assessment of technical and economic feasibility by the design departments. This paper proposes a method for a preliminary validation of new configurations at the marketing stage. Indeed a tentative Bill of Materials (BOM) and a cost of the product are obtained. A knowledge base is derived by eliciting the requirement compatibilities from existing products. The approach is matrix based and it analyzes recurrent dependencies between requirements and components variants to determine which parts are most likely to appear in the BOM. Then, the knowledge base is integrated with rules that are input by experienced designers through a simple syntax. The approach has been tested moving from the requirements of some instances of a family of cookers, and comparing the results obtained from the application of the method with the actual product BOM.
Keywords:
