Increasing market competitiveness forced industries to seek ways to reduce production costs and increase profitability. Companies operating in different markets face different customer expectations. Thus, it is necessary to develop products that meet the most varied market requirements, without demanding the high investment costs that product customization demands. The development of product platforms has helped companies to lower the cost of mass customization. The main benefit of using platforms is the reduction of investment in customized product development. A platform allows creating specific product families for each market application. In view of this context, a bibliographical review was performed with the objective of finding the state of art for the theme and mapping the research opportunities. For this activity, the research tool ProKnow-C (Knowledge Development Process – Constructivist) was considered. From a quantitative analysis, the most relevant papers were identified, based on authors, periodicals, the relevance of articles and keywords. Then, the systemic analysis of articles related to the theme evidences the frontiers of knowledge. The main objectives, methodologies, and opportunities for future research were mapped from 33 articles selected from the database. In the end, 3 gaps were identified for future work.

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Increasingly, manufacturing companies are focusing their efforts on exploring new markets. This new reality makes them strive for more efficient ways to offer their products at a lower cost and without losing their customization. As a result, the compromise between volume and customization (i.e. mass customization) is necessary and to support these product platforms have become a standard practice in the industry, especially the automotive one. However, another challenge arises with the use of platforms: the lack of an efficient way to develop product platforms that will bring a high level of customer satisfaction. The present work aims to develop a method capable of assisting global project groups for identifying representative failures in modules of product platforms and to set up product variations. It is intended to solve the problem of inefficient platform configuration for different markets, taking into account the specific application characteristics of each one. The methodological procedure is based on the Design Science Research (DSR) framework, according to which the work is carried out in six steps. The demonstration and evaluation steps of the solution were performed in the context of an automotive partner industry. The results show that is possible to use the method as a way to improve product platform configuration. The main contribution comes from the fact that the method performs a data analysis based on actual usage information under different product application conditions.

Cost estimation in the early stages of the product development process is fraught with uncertainties. The conceptual design is characterized by the absence of data, the most critical being costs. Decisions based on incorrect assumptions impact a project significantly and can increase unexpected costs in the future. As there are no structured means of obtaining costs in the conceptual phase, the reuse of data from past projects is an alternative discussed in the literature. Knowledge management approaches suggest a search for data in successful earlier projects. The use of ontologies has been regarded as an approach to capturing either knowledge stored in database or tacit knowledge. The proposed solution, in the form of an expert system built upon an ontological model, seeks to estimate costs based on costs in previous projects as well as expert tacit knowledge. The model is demonstrated by queries with needed functions and requirements. The ontological model searches the necessary information and generates a cost estimation. The present research project follows the methodological framework Design Science Research, presenting an overhead crane as a case study. The proposed approach has great potential in other industrial contexts as well.

Práticas de ensino podem desestimular estudantes da engenharia, principalmente na área de projetos. Adoção de metodologias ativas de ensino proporcionam imersão e atualizam as práticas tradicionais teóricas. Numa abordagem tradicional são disponibilizados exercícios de projetos mecânicos que alcançam resultados parciais e raramente são materializados. Assim, este projeto tem como objetivo disponibilizar os 03 primeiros exemplos de uma base virtual com modelos virtuais e físicos, com memorial de cálculos, que possam agir ativamente na construção de conhecimento em projetos mecânicos na engenharia. O projeto segue a metodologia de design thinking, que envolve o projetista com imersão no problema e construção da solução. Os memoriais de cálculos seguem a literatura para dar forma aos modelos virtuais tridimensionais. Para a etapa de prototipagem e construção dos modelos físicos, a manufatura aditiva por extrusão de filamento em PLA é adotada. A validação de eficiência dos modelos virtuais e físicos em sala de aula foi investigada por pesquisa qualitativa em 04 turmas de engenharia com resultados que indicam ser interessante ou vantajoso a todos os entrevistados.