As industries adopt consumer-focused product development strategies, they should offer broader product ranges in shorter design times and the processes that can manufacture in arbitrary lot sizes. In addition, they would need to apply state-of-the-art methods and tools to easily conduct early product design and development trade-off analysis among competing objectives. Methods in Product Design: New Strategies in Reengineering supplies insights into the methods and techniques that enable implementing a consumer-focused product design philosophy by integrating design and development capabilities with intelligent computer-based systems. The book defines customer focused design and discusses ways to assess changing demands and sources, and delves into what is needed to successfully manufacture goods in a demanding market. It reviews proven methods for assessing customer need. Then, after showing how changing needs impact the reengineering of products, it explains how change can be efficiently achieved. It details how IT advances and technology support customer-focused product development, discusses cutting-edge mass customization principles that maximize cost-effective production, and illustrates how to implement effective predictive maintenance policies. Methods in Product Design: New Strategies in Reengineering provides methods, state-of-the-art technologies, and new strategies for customer-focused product design and development that allow organizations to quickly respond to the demanding global marketplace.

The biggest challenge in any marketplace is uncertainty. The major changes taking place in world economies, politics, and demographics has raised market uncertainty to its highest level in the past 50 years. However, with new markets opening up in emerging and developing economies, the opportunities have never been better. To compete in this challenging atmosphere, product design/redesign and manufacturing must be integrated to produce better quality products faster and cheaper. Design Synthesis: Integrated Product and Manufacturing System Design provides a conceptual framework and methodologies to do just that. The book explains how to integrate innovative product design with the design of a batch manufacturing system. It covers the technical and social aspects of integration, presents research and best practices, and embeds integration within a framework of sustainable development. It covers the two methods for achieving design synthesis: integration and harmonisation. Product, manufacturing system, and social system architectures are integrated (united or combined to form a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts). The concurrent processes to design the architectures are harmonised (made compatible or coincident with one another). Wide in scope, the book supplies a multi-disciplinary perspective and an extensive discussion on how to maintain integrity during the design process. The authors present research and practices that are difficult or almost impossible to find. They describe the different types of system lifecycles and include guidelines on how to select the appropriate lifecycle for a specific design situation.

Designing Successful Products with Plastics: Fundamentals of Plastic Part Design provides expert insight into design considerations required to bring a concept product or part through design and ready-for-production. The book shows how integrating four key choices-materials, processes, tooling and design-in every design decision allows the designer to fully vet and optimize the design. Rather than focusing on design rules and engineering equations used during product development, the emphasis of the book is on what the designer needs to consider during the early conceptual visualization stages, and in the detailed stages of the design process. This approach will bridge the gap between the industrial designer, tasked with the 'big picture' product design and use, and the part designer, tasked with the detailed plastic part design for manufacture. Useful to both experienced and novice designers, this book brings valuable design process information through specific examples, enabling designers and engineers in the plastics industry to effectively use the available technical information to successfully design and manufacture new products.

'Made in Japan' is a simple phrase, but one full of meaning. From kettles and cutlery to chairs, Japan creates some of the most innovative, elegant, whimsical and well-made objects in the world. Combining high aesthetic standards with cutting-edge technology, many of these designs turn everyday items into functional works of art that would look as good in a museum as on a kitchen counter. Made in Japan surveys 100 of the country's recent design triumphs, among them furnishings, utensils, gadgets, clothing, office equipment and even a silent guitar. While the book features mainly mass-produced objects, it also includes one-off prototypes and limited-edition items that are immensely popular in Japan. Created specifically for the Japanese consumer, these products reflect the way people live, work and play in a country that prizes highly both exceptional craftsmanship and industrial perfection.

This book serves a unique purpose within the world of engineering. It covers the economics of modern manufacturing and focuses on examining the techniques and methods from a cost perspective. It can be used by both students and professionals alike. The book is useful to students in industrial engineering and mechanical engineering programs as a primary textbook for engineering economy, production costing, and related courses. It can also be used by MBA students specializing in production management and finance. Specific topics of coverage include the computation of direct and indirect cost for manufacturing operations, including a variety of overhead operations in such an environment. Costing of manufacturing methods such as casting, forging, turning, milling, and welding is addressed along with inventory analysis. The book also includes fundamental concepts such as cash flow analysis, present and future worth analysis, and rate of return analysis. Related topics such as equipment replacement, comparison of alternatives, depreciation, buy versus make decisions, interest factors, and equivalence are covered in detail as well. Key Features: Addresses the costing of manufacturing operations through a step-by-step problem solving approach. Includes traditional engineering topics such as cash flow analysis, present worth, future worth analysis, replacement analysis, equivalence, and depreciation are addressed in depth as well. Offers a variety of solved examples that can be used to develop a thorough understanding of the underlying concept. Provides a number of practice problems at the end of each chapter. Presents a large number of figures and tables in almost every chapter, to assist in visualizing the concept and apply it successfully. Production Economics: Evaluating Costs of Operations in Manufacturing and Service Industries focuses on rigorous problem solving. Each topic is presented succinctly along with numerous solved examples, along with a large number of end-of-chapter practice problems where applicable.

This book provides an updated, concise summary of forecasting air travel demand methodology. It looks at air travel demand forecasting research and attempts to outline the whole intellectual landscape of demand forecasting. It helps readers to understand the basic idea of TEI@I methodology used in forecasting air travel demand and how it is used in developing air travel demand forecasting methods. The book also discusses what to do when facing different forecasting problems making it a useful reference for business practitioners in the industry.

- Provides a cross-disciplinary overview of design theory through the lens of cultural studies, aesthetics and history - Offers a departure from the traditional compartmentalization of practice, history and theory - Engages student readers in contemporary design debates surrounding responsibility, cultural and social awareness and the contexts products are manufactured within.

In today's competitive world, customer demands for highly reliable products, makes reliability engineering a more challenging task. Reliability analysis is one of the main tools to ensure agreed upon delivery deadlines, which in turn maintains certainty in tangible factors such as goodwill and company reputation. This unique book considers a complex production system composing of several autonomous robots performing manufacturing jobs. The reliability of the complex system is analyzed under different conditions, with different objectives. Various reliability models are developed with each focusing on the specifications of a unique problem, and provides the evaluation of a complex system.

This book covers the problem of fidelity in the design of virtual environments with specific reference to the design of vehicle simulators. The default design goal has been on the physical replication of a given real-world environment and, in the case of vehicles, the specific appearance and function of vehicle components. This book discusses that perceptual, rather than physical, fidelity of a virtual environment, should be the design goal and the principal purpose is to produce human behavior. This book provides the rationale and design guidance to maximize perceptual fidelity in the development of virtual environments, and therefore maximize the costeffectiveness as well.

This is a primary text project that combines sustainability development with engineering entrepreneurship and design to present a transdisciplinary approach to modern engineering education. The book is distinguished by extensive descriptions of concepts in sustainability, its principles, and its relevance to environment, economy, and society. It can be read by all engineers regardless of their disciplines as well as by engineering students as they would be future designers of products and systems. This book presents a flexible organization of knowledge in various fields, which allows to be used as a text in a number of courses including for example, engineering entrepreneurship and design, engineering innovation and leadership, and sustainability in engineering design

In the process industry, shutdown and turnaround costs are responsible for an excessive amount of maintenance expenses. Process Plants: Shutdown and Turnaround Management explores various types of shutdowns, presents recommendations for better management, and offers feasible solutions to help reduce overheads. Because turnaround management is the largest maintenance activity, plant turnaround is the focal point of this text. The book details a plan to lengthen the interval between turnarounds, and curtail costs in process production management by at least 30 percent. This practical guidebook provides a thorough study of shutdown management, discusses different types of shutdown and managing events (emergency, unplanned, planned, and turnaround), and covers all aspects of plant turnaround management including startup, shutdown, and maintenance. It describes the five phases of shutdown management-initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing. It contains specific principles and precautions for successful shutdown planning, and highlights many aspects including turnaround philosophy, planning and scheduling, estimation, contractor management, execution, safety management, managing human resources, and post shut down review. Process Plants: Shutdown and Turnaround Management also includes topical information that readers can successfully apply to future shutdown projects. It is suitable for industry professionals and graduate students.

Why do we readily dispose of some things, whereas we keep and maintain others for years, despite their obvious wear and tear? Can a greater understanding of aesthetic value lead to a more strategic and sustainable approach to product design? Aesthetic Sustainability: Product Design and Sustainable Usage offers guidelines for ways to reduce, rethink, and reform consumption. Its focus on aesthetics adds a new dimension to the creation, as well as the consumption, of sustainable products. The chapters offer innovative ways of working with expressional durability in the design process. Aesthetic Sustainability: Product Design and Sustainable Usage is related to emotional durability in the sense that the focus is on the psychological and sensuous bond between subject and object. But the subject-object connection is based on more than emotions: aesthetically sustainable objects continuously add nourishment to human life. This book explores the difference between sentimental value and aesthetic value, and it offers suggestions for operational approaches that can be implemented in the design process to increase aesthetic sustainability. This book also offers a thorough presentation of aesthetics, focusing on the correlation between the philosophical approach to the aesthetic experience and the durable design experience. The book is of interest to students and scholars working in the fields of design, arts, the humanities and social sciences; additionally, it will speak to designers and other professionals with an interest in sustainability and aesthetic value.

Developed in the early 70s in Japan, the Kansei Engineering (KE) method gives you the tools to develop profitable and well-received products and services. Written by the founder of KE, MitsuoNagamachi, and co-authored by one of his proteges, Anitawati Mohd Lokman, Kansei Innovation: Practical Design Applications for Product and Service Development shows you how to nurture Kansei, develop the skill in observing people, and apply that skill to the development and design of products. In this book, Nagamachi shares his 50 years of experiences in enterprise guidance and product development, including examples of exceptional service innovation at companies such as Nissan Motor, Mazda, Toyota, Volvo, Fuji Heavy Industries, Mitsubishi Electric, Tenmaya Department Stores, Seibu Department Stores, Suntory, NEC, Sharp, Komatsu, Wacoal Corporation, Matsushita Electric Works (now Panasonic Electric Works), Boeing, and many more. These stories may surprise you when you learn about the new development of certain products that you already use. The book includes coverage of ergonomic and KE methods for studying human Kansei in product development and job improvement as well as discussion of how to use these methods for innovation in work improvement and activate KE for product development. It gives you a reliable instrument for predicting the reception of a product on the market before the development costs become too large. And, in the end, you will understand how Kansei a seemingly dubious presence is processed scientifically and able to have multilateral applications.

The phenomenon of globalization has increased in recent decades due to the opening of borders in Eastern Europe and the sudden emergence of other countries in the global trade economy. Yet, the process of becoming global to get access to growing markets or to achieve quality, service, and/or cost advantages from the reconfigured Value Chains is one of the most complex processes that companies undertake. Global Production Networks: Operations Design and Management addresses the challenges that companies face and proposes a range of innovative methodological approaches when designing and implementing global manufacturing and logistics networks. The book provides principles, tools, and techniques to help managers and practitioners tackle the design and management of global manufacturing and logistics networks. It presents guidelines based on the key activities and decisions of operations management for companies that have begun the internationalization process over the past few years, focusing on small and medium enterprises, and includes case studies that show best practices and recent trends. The author has worked closely with researchers and practitioners throughout the world to offer a methodological answer for the analysis and design of global networks with productive multilocation as well as the design of plants, warehouses, and supplier networks in new international contexts. The text also outlines the GlobOpe (Global Operations) framework and roadmap that outlines a logical path to identifying sources of competitiveness when designing and managing Global Production Networks. The process of internationalization in global markets has often been tackled from the business point of view, but rarely from the perspective of the production and logistics systems that support it. This book takes an in-depth look at the strategy of production and logistics operations, providing a roadmap for managers who need to analyze, assess, define, and deploy the operations strategy in their companies.

As RFID technology is becoming increasingly popular, the need has arisen to address the challenges and approaches to successful implementation. RFID and Auto-ID in Planning and Logistics: A Practical Guide for Military UID Applications presents the concepts for students, military personnel and contractors, and corporate managers to learn about RFID and other automatic information capture technologies, and their integration into planning and logistics functions. The text includes comparisons of RFID with technologies such as bar codes, satellite tags, and global positioning systems and provides a decision model for choosing the appropriate technology for a given application. By providing the histories, current use, and future applications of RFID and automatic identification technologies (AIT), the book discusses supply chain planning and logistics uses for these technologies. It addresses the fundamental relationships in RFID, including how antennae, integrated circuitry, and substrate work together. The text provides detailed information for troubleshooting design issues and an understanding of passive, semi-passive, and active tags, so an informed choice of technology type can be made. It describes the unique identification (UID) standards necessary for military contractors and how to use RFID and AIT to meet those requirements. This book is unique in the depth of material presented, making it appropriate for engineers, students, and operational personnel as a resource for foundational concepts for integrating logistics and RFID. A comprehensive reference, this volume can is an academic text, a practitioner's handbook, and a military contractor's UID guide for using RFID and AIT technologies.

Designed by practitioners for practitioners, Supply Chain Management and Logistics: Innovative Strategies and Practical Solutions provides a wide-spectrum resource on many different aspects involved in supply chain management, including contemporary applications. With contributions from leading experts from all over the world, the book includes innovative strategies and practical solutions that address problems encountered by enterprise in management of supply chain and logistics. It details general techniques and specific approaches to a broad range of important, inspiring, and unanswered questions in the field. The book is organized around four major research themes in supply chain management: 1) supply chain strategy and coordination, 2) supply chain network optimization, 3) inventory management in supply chain, and 4) financial decisions in supply chain. The sequence of these themes helps transition from an enterprise-wide framework to network design to operational management to financial aspects of the supply chain. Each individual theme also addresses the answer to a challenging question as to how to go about applying quantitative tools to real-life operations, resulting in practical solutions. As the world moves toward more competitive and open markets, effective supply chain management is of critical importance to the success or failure of an enterprise. Despite a large amount of research achieved in the past decades on the supply chain management topic, many researchers and practitioners are still devoting considerable efforts on the emerging new problems. Designed to give you a collection of topics that bridge the gap between the academic arena and industrial practice, the book supplies a contemporary and up-to-date review on the advanced theory, applications, and practices of supply chain management, making it a rich resource for the design, analysis, and implementation of supply chain management problems arising in a wide range of industries.

This book is the first in the literature to present the state of the art and some interesting and relevant applications of the Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP). The AHP is a conceptually and mathematically simple, easily implementable, yet extremely powerful tool for group decision making and is used around the world in a wide variety of decision situations, in fields such as government, business, industry, healthcare, and education. The aim of this book is to study various fuzzy methods for dealing with the imprecise and ambiguous data in AHP. Features: First book available on FAHP. Showcases state-of-the-art developments. Contains several novel real-life applications. Provides useful insights to both academics and practitioners in making group decisions under uncertainty This book provides the necessary background to work with existing fuzzy AHP models. Once the material in this book has been mastered, the reader will be able to apply fuzzy AHP models to his or her problems for making decisions with imprecise data.

Full of practical examples, Introduction to Scheduling presents the basic concepts and methods, fundamental results, and recent developments of scheduling theory. With contributions from highly respected experts, it provides self-contained, easy-to-follow, yet rigorous presentations of the material. The book first classifies scheduling problems and their complexity and then presents examples that demonstrate successful techniques for the design of efficient approximation algorithms. It also discusses classical problems, such as the famous makespan minimization problem, as well as more recent advances, such as energy-efficient scheduling algorithms. After focusing on job scheduling problems that encompass independent and possibly parallel jobs, the text moves on to a practical application of cyclic scheduling for the synthesis of embedded systems. It also proves that efficient schedules can be derived in the context of steady-state scheduling. Subsequent chapters discuss scheduling large and computer-intensive applications on parallel resources, illustrate different approaches of multi-objective scheduling, and show how to compare the performance of stochastic task-resource systems. The final chapter assesses the impact of platform models on scheduling techniques. From the basics to advanced topics and platform models, this volume provides a thorough introduction to the field. It reviews classical methods, explores more contemporary models, and shows how the techniques and algorithms are used in practice.

This volume is concerned with digital human modeling. The utility of this area of research is to aid the design of systems that are benefitted from reducing the need for physical prototyping and incorporating ergonomics and human factors earlier in design processes. Digital human models are representations of some aspects of a human that can be inserted into simulations or virtual environments to facilitate prediction of safety, satisfaction, usability and performance. These representations may consider the physical, physiological, cognitive, behavioral or emotional aspects. They are typically represented by some visualization with the math and science computed in the background. Explicitly, the book covers the following subject areas: I. Applications II. Mobility and Universal Access III. Physical and Physiological Aspects IV. Product and Process Design V. Motion Analysis VI. Cognitive Aspects VII. Human Response and Behavioral Aspects VIII. Novel Systems Approaches This book is of special value to those researchers and practitioners involved in various aspects of product, process and system design worldwide. Engineers, ergonomists and human factors specialists will see a broad spectrum of applications for this research, especially in the automotive and manufacturing industries, military, aerospace and service industries such as healthcare. Seven other titles in the Advances in Human Factors and Ergonomics Series are: Advances in Human Factors and Ergonomics in Healthcare Advances in Cross-Cultural Decision Making Advances in Cognitive Ergonomics Advances in Occupational, Social and Organizational Ergonomics Advances in Human Factors, Ergonomics and Safety in Manufacturing and Service Industries Advances in Ergonomics Modeling & Usability Evaluation Advances in Neuroergonomics and Human Factors of Special Populations

- Provides designers and non-designers with new ideas and tools for creating useful, energy-and-resource-efficient product designs and systems - Offers a critical perspective on the impact of new technologies and product designs - Includes historic and contemporary examples, such as thermostats, electric lighting, air quality sensors, domestic maintenance, and methods of transportation - Written in an engaging, accessible tone for professionals and students.

Design Materials and Making for Social Change spans the two interconnected worlds of the material and the social, at different scales and in different contexts, and explores the value of the knowledge, skills and methods that emerge when design researchers work directly with materials and hold making central to their practice. Through the social entanglements of addressing material impacts, the contributors to this edited volume examine homelessness, diaspora, migration, the erosion of craft skills and communities, dignity in work and family life, the impacts of colonialism, climate crisis, education, mental health and the shifting complexities in collaborating with and across diverse disciplines and stakeholders. This book celebrates the role of materials and making in design research by demonstrating the diverse and complex interplay between disciplines and the cultures it enables, when in search of alternative futures. Design Materials and Making for Social Change will be of interest to scholars in materials design, textile design, product design, fashion design, maker culture, systemic design, social design, design for sustainability and circular design.

- Written in a humorous and accessible style by an experienced designer and educator - Features over 100 colourful and engaging illustrations to demonstrate concepts - Encourages professionals and students to find creative and playful solutions to complex global issues.

As the world becomes increasingly globalized, today's companies expect to hire engineers who are effective in a global business environment. Although you can find many books covering globalization, most of them are aimed at business, management, or social sciences. Developed with engineers in mind, Global Engineering: Design, Decision Making, and Communication covers the theory, models, and decision making tools for incorporating globalization into engineering work. Written by a multidisciplinary team of experts in industrial, mechanical, and manufacturing engineering and organizational communications, this book is a primer on how to improve designs, make better decisions, and communicate more effectively in an international working environment. The contents of the book reflect the authors' multidisciplinary perspective and their experience in working on projects around the world. The book presents globalization as a phenomenon affecting the way companies operate and their engineering functions. It uses a case study format based on system improvement projects and real industrial projects, ranging from design to supply chain and logistics problems. This case study format allows for a natural presentation of critical technical and non-technical concepts and their complex interactions. The challenge that engineers face in a global environment results from the need to be aware of interdependencies and to be able to determine which ones are most important in each situation. Unique in its focus on engineering, this book provides a framework for how to better design, make decisions, and communicate in the new era of global competition.

Written by international contributors, Learning Curves: Theory, Models, and Applications first draws a learning map that shows where learning is involved within organizations, then examines how it can be sustained, perfected, and accelerated. The book reviews empirical findings in the literature in terms of different sources for learning and partial assessments of the steps that make up the actual learning process inside the learning curve. Traditionally, books on learning curves have focused either on cost accounting or production planning and control. In these books, the learning curve has been treated as a forecasting tool. This book synthesizes current research and presents a clear picture of organizational learning curves. It explores how organizations improve other measures of organizational performance including quality, inventory, and productivity, then looks inside the learning curve to determine the actual processes through which organizations learn.

In real-life scenarios, service management involves complex decision-making processes usually affected by random or stochastic variables. Under such uncertain conditions, the development and use of robust and flexible strategies, algorithms, and methods can provide the quantitative information necessary to make better business decisions. Decision Making in Service Industries: A Practical Approach explores the challenges that must be faced to provide intelligent strategies for efficient management and decision making that will increase your organization's competitiveness and profitability. The book provides insight and understanding into practical and methodological issues related to decision-making processes under uncertainty in service industries. It examines current and future trends regarding how these decision-making processes can be efficiently performed for better design of service systems by using probabilistic algorithms as well as hybrid and simulation-based approaches. Traditionally, many quantitative tools have been developed to make decisions in production companies. This book explores how to use these tools for making decisions inside service industries. Thus, the authors tackle strategic, tactical, and operational problems in service companies with the help of suitable quantitative models such as heuristic and metaheuristic algorithms, simulation, or queuing theory. Generally speaking, decision making is a hard task in business fields. Making the issue more complex, most service companies' problems are related to the uncertainty of the service demand. This book sheds light on these types of decision problems. It provides studies that demonstrate the suitability of quantitative methods to make the right decisions. Consequently, this book presents the business analytics needed to make strategic decisions in service industries.