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This paper addresses the early design and development of amorphous systems. As competitive differentiators, many companies are focusing on amorphous systems comprised of primarily non-physical components, such as software, firmware, and service or business processes. This paper contrasts the development of amorphous systems with that of traditional physical systems. Whereas many tools used in new product development do apply to amorphous systems, the process and the tools need adaptation. The key points are: 1) Modeling of the system using “solution elements” instead of parts, 2) Preliminary concept generation based on use scenarios, and 3) Early consideration of the business model in the context of a complex value chain. The paper presents our proposed 10 step guide to amorphous product development and illustrates it with a “smart refrigerator” example, as well as citing the guide’s deployment in industry.

Most design for Manufacturing (dfM) applications to date have focused on a particular model of a product. Recent drive for faster times-to-market are drawing attention of companies like ABB, BMW, Ebara, Nissan and Toshiba to product architecture, i.e., achieving platforms that cover diverse market segments over multiple generations. The trend in industry also has shown two major types of platform development activity: architecture innovation and platform refinement. Architecture innovation addresses new products as well as amorphous products such as system and service products. Platform refinement concerns mostly existing products and involves identifying current platform base, and optimizing its structure. The critical steps in platform design are the definition of specific drivers, and the identification of complexity and requirement metrics. Complexity and requirement metrics contribute to developing the value model under specific drivers for the desired platform. This paper discusses the past platform related work from academia in these perspectives, proposes a 5-step methodology co-developed with Toshiba along with their pilot examples, and a future research agenda.

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Companies struggle to identify new business opportunities based on their core competence be it products or services. When a company focuses on improving current offerings or is too involved in them, it has difficulty discovering new applications for them. Scenario Graph is an original design method for products or services that aids design teams to envision four types of information while in the market definition phase: potential user locations, activities associated with the location, user circumstances, and the corresponding user state. By using Scenario Graph, design teams are better able to capture new values, scenarios, and behaviors of potential customers. This knowledge captured in the fuzzy front end stage can then be translated into inputs to other Design for X (dfX) tools to improve the definition of the product or service. Another benefit of the tool is that it directs the design team to discover unidentified failure modes of the current offerings by identifying unintended user scenarios. In this paper, a detailed guide, along with case studies demonstrates the usefulness of the tool when applied in the early phase of product or service development. Scenario Graph will assist design teams and managers in discovering new product or service opportunities.