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Proceedings of DTM'03 Towards a constitutive foundation for the creation of a scientific formalism for product realization Motte, Damien 2003 Document Version: Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Motte, D. (2003). Towards a constitutive foundation for the creation of a scientific formalism for product realization. Unpublished. 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LUND UNIVERSITY PO Box 117 221 00 Lund +46 46-222 00 00 A SCIENTIFIC FORMALISM FOR PRODUCT REALIZATION IN A GLOBAL MANUFACTURING ENTERPRISE: AN OPPORTUNITY FOR GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS TOWARDS A CONSTITUTIVE FOUNDATION FOR THE CREATION OF A SCIENTIFIC FORMALISM FOR PRODUCT REALIZATION Damien Motte* *Division of Machine Design at the Department of Design Sciences Lund Institute of Technology at Lund University Box 118 SE-221 00 LUND, Sweden Tel: +46 (0) 46 2228513 Email: [email protected] ABSTRACT KEYWORDS: product realization, scientific History shows that companies that survive formalism of design, problem solving proc- in a severe competitive climate are those ess, cognitive psychology, change manage- that are highly adaptable to market and ment, product specifications. technological changes. Product development is one of the key activities that assure com- pany survival by renewal of its offer to its 1. INTRODUCTION customers. A scientific formalism has to be “[I]f history is a guide, no more than a third created to fulfill two purposes: 1) to ensure of today's major corporations will survive in that the design and development of a prod- an economically important way over the uct is successful (the final product must ful- next twenty-five years.” With this warning, fill all the needs with the constraints of Foster & Kaplan (2001:14) show that com- costs, delays and resources), and 2) to inte- panies have to adapt and integrate social and grate market and technological changes that technological changes to survive. will permit the company to survive. These changes concern new market ori- In this paper, eight important issues con- entations, acceptation of new technologies, cerning a scientific formalism of product re-organizations, etc. Product realization is realization are presented. Concerning the one of the most important vectors of change: basic design operations: research must ex- indeed, this process transforms new needs plore more deeply the cognitive aspects of into reality, carries out the company strategy designing, especially at the level of em- and integrates technological advances. It has bodiment and detail design, as well as col- thus to be organized and supported very laborative design. There is a need of formal- carefully. The actual state-of-art is a patch- ization and interplay between the different work of “best practices”, resulting in pre- product parameters (customer needs, prod- scriptive procedures, and scientific, rigorous uct specifications, product subsystem pa- but specific and isolated methods. What will rameters). The classic project manage- be needed to ensure a successful product ment—control of the project and co- realization is a scientific formalism that will ordination between project members—has structure the product development activities to be rethought for product development and so that 1) the product will be as desired and design. Finally, this formalism must permit 2) to integrate market and technological creativity in design, which is the warrant of changes that will permit the company to the evolution of the products and in this survive. way, the company. The realization of this formalism ad- dresses numerous research issues. They are 1 Conceptual Design Embodiment Design Detail Design Knowledge Prescriptive methods (design Bounded rationality methods, PSP) *1 Designer 2 * 3 Beijing Chicago * Team Project activities PS 6 0 * Product 4 models 7 PSf * 5 * PSn Management * Major issue 8 Influence * * Figure 1 Representation of the major issues towards the creation of a formalism for product realization developed in this paper considering the de- In the second category a lack of inter- scription presented in Figure 1. Eight major play between the different product parame- issues have been developed among the fol- ters customer needs (product specifications, lowing dimensions: product models, project product subsystem parameters) is noticed. activities, teams, designers and their knowl- This leads to a lack of control, a difficulty of edge. They have been allocated into three communication between the different actors categories: basic design operations, product and difficulty in taking into account the parameters, and management. changes, internal and external, that occur Basic design operations, the first cate- during product realization. gory, are at the core of product realization. The third category of product manage- They are usually modeled as problem solv- ment needs to be redefined. The classical ing processes (Hubka 1976/19821, Pahl & project organization structure, with a project Beitz 1996, Olsson 1976). After having de- leader responsible for co-ordination and veloped models of design activities over the control is becoming highly complex in last 40 years rational, the next challenge is global projects where product development to integrate the cognitive limitations of the members are scattered all over the world. IT human being. When designing is collabora- technologies will be needed to execute low- tive, the problem will address group design valued tasks that are mostly co-ordination support and group decision-making. This is problems to let the manager focus on the presented in the first part of this paper. tasks of controls and major decisions. Finally, as an extension to the issues concerning a scientific formalism, creativity 1 The second date of two separated by a slash mark indicates has its importance for a global manufactur- the reference where English translation is available. 2 ing company. Creativity has to be kept alive tive sciences, from psychology to artificial and novel ideas exploited. Indeed, formal- intelligence, the designer’s way of reasoning ism helps to rationalize the product realiza- has attracted increasing attention during tion, that is, to ensure that a need will be recent decades. There is a consensus that the fulfilled by the right solution. But rationali- nature of design processes is based on a zation can hinder pioneering findings. The problem-solving activity: activities of un- last part will deal with this problem. derstanding the task, generating solutions, evaluating and selecting them. 2. BASIC DESIGN OPERATIONS In the conceptual design phase, where We can distinguish two cases: the design problems are ill-defined, a lot of works have activities made by a single designer (*1, see been done during the last 15 years. Here are Figure 1) and design activities made by a the main findings: Atman et al. (1999) and group of designers (*2). In the first case, Adams & Atman (1999) confirm the validity rational methods and principles to guide the of prescriptive methods in the design proc- designer have been developed over the last ess. The students who considered more al- 120 years (since Reuleaux 1875), but the ternatives had a better result quality. Other cognitive limitations of the designers have studies however temper the results. Design- only been studied for the past 15 years. The ers observing the prescribed methodologies integration of human “bounded rationality” will be on average more successful than to the prescriptive design activities is one of those who do not (Pahl et al. 1999), but pre- the biggest efforts of the next 20 years. scriptive models “are in conflict with natural When designers are working together on the cognitive models” according to Condoor et same subject, group supports has to be con- al. (1992: 277). These authors list human sidered, and when they are working sepa- behaviors and characteristics that contradict rately, it is the harmonization of their results rigid procedures: Early appearance and per- that becomes complex. sistence of a core idea; Lack of generation of alternatives; Design fixation; Lack of 2.1. Cognitive perspective on the design flexibility; Subjective judgment; Reluctance process to change after a design is made; “satis- As summarized in Pahl et al. (1999b), ficing”. Ball et al. (1998:213) complete the when engineering design stopped being con- picture: failure to search for alternative solu- sidered as “an artistic activity”, design tions, marked inclination to stick with early methodologies could be developed. Special “satisficing”
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