Algorithms, Industrial efficiency, Problem solving, Production (Economic theory), Simulation methods & models, Prototypes, User interfaces (Computer systems), Surface roughness, Sintering, Surfaces (Technology), Sinter (Metallurgy), and Case studies

In the present work an attempt has been made to achieve minimum average part surface roughness (best overall surface quality), minimum build time and support structure for stereolithography (SL) and selective laser sintering (SLS) processed parts by determining optimum part deposition orientation. A conventional optimisation algorithm based on a trust region method (available with MATLAB-7 optimisation tool box) has been used to solve the multi-objective optimisation problem. It is observed that the problem is highly multi-modal in nature and a suitable initial guess, which is used as an input to execute the optimisation module, is important to achieve a global optimum. A simple methodology has been proposed to find out the initial guess so that global minimum is obtained. Finally the surface roughness simulation is carried out with optimum part deposition orientation to have an idea of surface roughness variation over the entire part's surface before depositing the part. Case studies are presented to demonstrate the capabilities of the developed system. The major achievements of this work are consideration of multiple objectives for the two rapid prototyping processes, successful use of conventional optimisation algorithm available with MATLAB to handle multiple objectives and development of graphical user interface-based system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New product development, Prototypes, Engineering design, Case studies, and Window blinds

This paper presents a case study of the design development of a new product, electrostatically actuated window blinds. The text presents a description of each stage in the prototype development followed by a discussion of different prototyping methods and design for manufacture and assembly issues. Results from electromechanical and thermal analyses of the product itself are also included. This case study determined that, for this product development, the most efficient, cost-effective prototyping solution was simple plastic injection moulding. It also concluded that following good design for manufacture and assembly practices during prototype construction will save time and money when transitioning to a production design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapid prototyping, Product design, Technological innovations & economics, Management science research, Distributors (Commerce), Management, Strategic planning, Manufactures, Supply chains, Suppliers, Original equipment manufacturers, Manufacturing process management, and Case studies

Existing studies of supplier involvement in new product development have mainly focused on project-related short-term processes and success factors. This study validates and extends an existing exploratory framework, which comprises both long-term strategic processes and short-term operational processes that are related to supplier involvement. The empirical validation is based on a multiple-case study of supplier collaborations at a manufacturer in the copier and printer industry. The analysis of eight cases of supplier involvement reveals that the results of supplier–manufacturer collaborations and the associated issues and problems can best be explained by the patterns in the extent to which the manufacturer manages supplier involvement in the short term and the long term. The results of this study reveal that the initial framework is helpful in understanding why certain collaborations are not effectively managed yet conclude that the existing analytical distinction among four different management areas does not sufficiently reflect empirical reality. This leads to the reconceptualization and further detailing of the framework. Instead of four managerial areas, this study proposes to distinguish between the strategic management arena and the operational management arena. The strategic management arena contains processes that together provide long-term, strategic direction and operational support for project teams adopting supplier involvement. These processes also contribute to building up a supplier base that can meet current and future technology and capability needs. The operational management arena contains processes that are aimed at planning, managing, and evaluating the actual collaborations in a specific development project. The results of this study suggest that success of involving suppliers in product development is reflected by the firm's ability to capture both short- and long-term benefits. If companies spend most of their time on operational management in development projects, they will fail to use the leverage effect of planning and preparing such involvement through strategic management activities. Also, they will not be sufficiently able to capture possible long-term technology and learning benefits that may spin off from individual projects. Long-term collaboration benefits can only be captured if a company can build long-term relationships with key suppliers, with which it builds learning routines and ensures that the capability sets of both parties are aligned and remain useful for future joint projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prototypes, Manufacturing processes, Product design, Industrial design, Manufactures, Technology, and Case studies

Current research by the developers of rapid prototyping systems is generally focused on improvements in cost, speed and materials to create truly economic and practical economic rapid manufacturing (RM) machines. In addition to being potentially smarter/faster/cheaper replacements for existing manufacturing technologies, the next generation of these machines will provide opportunities not only for the design and fabrication of products without traditional constraints but also for organizing manufacturing activities in new, innovative and previously undreamt of ways. This paper outlines a novel devolved manufacturing (DM) ‘factory-less’ approach to e-manufacturing, which integrates mass customization (MC) concepts, RM technologies and the communication opportunities of the Internet/World Wide Web, describes two case studies of different DM implementations and discusses the limitations and appropriateness of each, and, finally, draws some conclusions about the technical, manufacturing and business challenges involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decision making, Data analysis, Prototypes, Model validation, Case studies, and Informations (Criminal procedure)

Effective information requirements analysis (IRA) is critical for the success of application systems. Literature has mainly defined the contingencies under which specific IRA methods are most effective for determining the content of information. This paper shows how IRA methods can supplement each other, instead of being viewed as alternatives. A process for combining IRA methods is developed. Resolving differences between Decision Analysis and Data Analysis by developing different kinds of Prototypes is presented as an integrated framework of IRA. Case studies illustrating this approach are included. The paper extends research in two areas: IRA and Prototyping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrial costs, New product development, Customization, Medicine, Methodology, Centrifugal pumps, and Case studies

The aim of this study is to apply and validate a general-purpose working methodology, derived from the analysis of processes which come from two different domains (the field of medicine and the preservation of cultural heritage), in the investment casting process. CSCW methods and tools have proven to be the best ‘gluing tool’ to bond the different activities, and thus heavily exploited during the customization of the general-purpose working methodology. This paper describes a case study performed in an industrial sector and related to the investment casting application field. It was chosen to test methodology and to demonstrate its wide applicability. The case study involved the realization of a centrifugal pump impeller, where the application of this CSCW-based methodology has delivered important results such as the reduction of product development time and the drastic reduction of production costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marketing, Relationship marketing, Marketing management, Information technology, Marketing strategy, Consumer behavior, Customer relations, Brand choice, Business success, Customer retention, Customer satisfaction, Consumer attitudes, and Management

The importance of effective customer relationships as a key to customer value and hence shareholder value is widely emphasised. In order to enhance these relationships, the application of IT to marketing through customer relationship management (CRM) software, e-commerce and other initiatives is growing rapidly. This study examines the factors that influence the successful deployment of CRM applications, with particular emphasis on those factors which are distinct from other areas of application. Using the analytic induction method, success factors were derived from five in-depth case studies. Resulting factors underemphasised in previous literature include: the need for project approval procedures which allow for uncertainty; the need to leverage models of best practice; the importance of prototyping new processes, not just IT; and the need to manage for the delivery of the intended benefits, rather than just implementing the original specification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Automobiles, Customer satisfaction, Ergonomics, Interviewing, Questionnaires, Research funding, Signs & symbols, Anthropometry, Computer simulation, Graphic arts, Research methodology, Case studies, Readability (Literary style), Surveys, and Visual fields

This work proposes a design methodology using ergonomics and anthropometry concepts applied to traffic sign and street name sign projects. Initially, a literature revision on cognitive ergonomics and anthropometry is performed. Several authors and their design methodologies are analyzed and the aspects to be considered in projects of traffic and street name signs are selected and other specific aspects are proposed for the design methodology. A case study of the signs of 'Street of Antiques' in Porto Alegre city is presented. To do that, interviews with the population are made to evaluate the current situation of signs. After that, a new sign proposal with virtual prototyping is done using the developed methodology. The results obtained with new interviews about the proposal show the user satisfaction and the importance of cognitive ergonomics to development of this type of urban furniture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strategic alliances (Business), Technological innovations, New product development, Product management, Prototypes, Time to market (New products), Area specialists, Transactive model (Communication), and Case studies

There is wide agreement in analyses of strategic alliances that, regardless of the purpose of the alliance, members of the partner organizations should engage in intensive mutual learning to make the alliance a success. In contrast to this view, the present article shows that in strategic alliances aimed at product innovations by recombining partners' extant technologies, learning between specialists can be reduced considerably without jeopardizing success. This is made possible through four interconnected mechanisms integrated into the concept of transactive organizational learning (TOL): (1) modularization, which allows specialists of different domains to develop modules to a large extent independently of each other and to concentrate communication between themselves on the design of interfaces between modules; (2) storing of knowledge in artifacts instead of in organizational members' memories; (3) localization of knowledge not present in the project team but for which a need has arisen through transactive memory; and (4) knowledge integration by prototyping (i.e., by repeated testing of modules and of interactions between modules until a satisfactorily working end product is achieved). Although these four mechanisms reduce the need for cross-learning between specialists of different domains, some common knowledge and some cross-learning between the partners' specialists is still required. Case studies on four of SAP's strategic alliances for product innovation with different partners lend empirical support to this study's concept. The article concludes with implications for practice: Companies should find out whether the TOL mechanisms that reduce time to market are present, to what extent their potential is exploited, and how well they work together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New product development, Product management, Marketing management, Commercial products, Time to market (New products), Rapid prototyping, Business incubators, Concurrent engineering, Inventions, Manufacturing processes, Industrial design, Marketing, and Case studies

The traditional view of the process of new product development (NPD), which is often prescribed as a series of activity "stages", is critically reviewed. A number of problems are identified with this and other approaches to NPD as accurate representations of the process, such as their concentration on intra-firm aspects and their ordered and sequential structure. The paper argues for an alternative approach, based on variable "blocks of NPD activities, which also takes account of external organizations' involvement in the process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information services, Web development, Questionnaires, User interfaces (Computer systems), Access to information, Age distribution, Case studies, Scale analysis (Psychology), T-test (Statistics), and Travel

Website redesign is a complex task that requires the organised use of design methods and guidelines as well as meaningful assessments. An important reason for website redesign is to enhance the usability and accessibility for ‘non-traditional’ user groups like the older population. The paper presents a case study of the redesign of a touristic web portal in order for it to be senior-friendly. The redesign process involved: (a) identification of a set of 7 principles and 45 guidelines (7p/45g) for web design for older adults; (b) heuristic evaluation of the original website on the basis of the identified 7p/45g set; (c) redesign of the website in an interactive online prototype; and (d) comparative summative usability evaluation, which involved 12 older users and post hoc interviews and questionnaires. The results showed that the redesigned website was significantly more usable and acceptable than the original. This study makes two contributions in the field: first, it outlines a web redesign process for older adults, which is effective in terms of time and cost, making use of various assessments of experts and users; second, it presents the application of this process in a manner that can be adopted and repeated in other redesign cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industrial marketing, New product development, Industrial design, Rapid prototyping, Product management, and Case studies

Despite the acknowledgement of functional integration as an important driver of new product development (NPD) success and the growing recognition of the significance of industrial design (ID), the integration between industrial design and other functional units in NPD has been rarely researched. In this article, we examine the marketing and ID integration in NPD in the context of China. Mainly based on Cooper's (1994) stage-gate phases of NPD process and Gupta, Raj, and Wilemon's (1985) categorization of NPD activities, we develop a conceptual framework that identifies 29 areas that might require integration or where integration might occur between marketing and ID. Specifically, we investigate and compare the current and the ideal integration between marketing and ID perceived by the two functions. An analysis of data from 113 companies reveals that the current level of integration fell short of the ideal level of integration in all the phases of NPD. Both managers believed in the descending trend of integration along the stage-gate NPD phases and were dissatisfied with the current level of integration in all the NPD phases. Except for a few areas of agreement, marketing and ID managers showed significant differences with each other in their perceptions of the current and the ideal integration in most of the 29 areas. Despite the disagreements however, the two functions agreed with each other on the most important areas that require integration and achieved the highest level of marketing-ID integration. These findings suggest that firms should improve the marketing-ID integration in all the NPD phases and that management could improve the effectiveness of marketing-ID integration by prioritizing and focusing on the most important areas. Research and managerial implications, limitations, and future research directions are presented in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quality function deployment, Product management, Quality control, New product development, Industrial research, Customer satisfaction, Commercial products, Rapid prototyping, and Case studies

Through a case study showing the development of a new mug of draft beer, this work presents a method for integration of the Kano model in Quality Function Deployment - QFD. Traditionally, QFD uses data about importance and customer's satisfaction with different requirements to identify the attributes that should be incorporated or improved in a product. As customers tend to rate basic requirements with high importance, the traditional QFD method tends to give higher priority to these requirements to the detriment of innovative ones. The Kano model allows the identification of exciting requirements, usually associated with innovations. Then, the integration of the Kano model in the QFD can allow innovative requirements to receive the necessary attention in the product's development process. Two methods, proposed in the literature for this integration, are presented and their limitations analyzed. Finally, through data collected with 289 potential consumers of draft beer mugs, the case study illustrates the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]