Product Development

The Cluster of Excellence “Integrative Production Technology for High-Wage Countries”, funded by the German Research Foundation, at the RWTH Aachen University develops solutions to improve the competitiveness of production in Germany. In the future, production systems should be capable of independently adapting to new conditions as a result of the development of cognitive controls, e.g., for robot-aided assembly processes. The tasks of the human operator will thereby focus primarily on system monitoring and direct cooperation with robots. Based on the new requirements regarding this cognitive system, one focus is the development of an ergonomic human-machine-interface.

The market-oriented product development describes a focusing of needs, which leads ideally to high product quality and profitability. In the context of “Digital Factory” this paper focuses on the integrated product and process design, which is oriented to the physical part of the product. Due to the high product complexity, shorter product life cycles and increased competition situation is the product development faced with new challenges. Both the speed and the quality of planning should be improved further. Only the combination of organizational approaches and information technologies like for example “Simultaneous Engineering” and the “Digital Factory” promises a sufficient increase of planning efficiency. The following paper deals with existing methodologies and promising approaches in the field of “Digital Factory” against the background of an integrated product and process design. Referring to the requirements of logistics planning, an early integration of ...

The use of virtual engineering techniques in the field of product development requires a continuity of all digital development processes, workflows, tools and data. While this continuity is state-of-the-art on a level of geometric description it is still not achieved on a functional description level of product features. This paper analyses the state of the development and current problems in the process of introduction of virtual engineering in machine and plant engineering enterprises. Furthermore, the authors present their current research works in development of continuous digital process chains for product development.

The paper describes a model conceived at the IMI for the management of product and process knowledge in complex multi-project environments. Coming from project and product-related approaches of project, program and portfolio management, an integrated model based on a universal product structure was developed which aims at supporting the transfer of product and process knowledge over enterprise hierarchies and thus to shorten the development time during the development process.

These days most companies operate in buyer‘s markets, where a strong focus on customer requirements is a main driver for competitive advantage and sustainable profits. Key issue in this context is the integration of the customer view into technology development without setting narrow boundaries for the potential technological solution space. Product development activities often concentrate on the definition of requirements for specific components at an early stage. This article shows an approach, where the customer view is translated via product functions into technical specifications. Thus technology development has a much broader potential solution space compared to an early focussing on specific components.

The dynamism in industrial markets and the increasing competition due to globalization and technological equivalence forces companies of the capital goods sector to rethink their business models. In this context customer solutions are considered as trendsetting. However, the individual solution of a customer’s problem poses a major challenge in terms of transforming from a product-centric mindset to a supplier of customized solution. This article analyzes to what extend the concept of mass customization can give incentives in order to successfully create and provide customer solutions.

Industrial customers are increasingly expecting to be provided with integrated solutions that in addition to a decent physical product comprise diverse services as well. Such solutions, called product-service systems (PSS), have to fulfil both customer individual targets and manufacturer targets. Due to this, manufacturer have to define key figures, which allow to choose the specific configuration of PSS and to measure the performance while it is used. This paper presents an approach for generating key figures for selecting PSS and controlling their performance.

Companies have to determine which real net output ratio is the best for them. In such a case a company must decide which combination of product components and processes should be produced internal or external. There are no methods available to analyze the benefits of an internal or external manufacturing for products with high variety. However, due to the increasing number of variants and the low real net output ratio this question becomes more and more important. Therefore this article will introduce a method capable to support the make or buy decision for products with high variety.

Firms use product classifications as a mean for structuring diversified ranges of products and harmonizing their description. In many industries, products are subject of differentiation and increasing customer requirements which both require a stronger customization of products. This trend affects also product classifications which undergo changes quicker and more often as well as get more detailed. Therefore, classifying and describing products can no longer be regarded as a one-time task; it has to be done multiple times or even on a regular basis. In this paper, we take a cost perspective and propose a method for estimating product classification costs in firms.

Due to increasing product complexity, quality, timing and resource constraints, the management of product development projects becomes more and more challenging. Especially the determination of current product quality, an indicator for the actual development status, is hard to accomplish. For this reason, the article presents a concept for a real-time quality estimation for products and intermediate results. The concept is used and evaluated in the semiconductor industry.