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Citation: BORJA, V., BELL, R. and HARDING, J.A., 2001. Assisting design for manufacture using the data model driven approach. Abstract: The data model driven approach argues that computer aided engineering systems should be based on information data models in order to properly support the concurrent design of products. These models are the foundation for database representations of products and factories, and enable information sharing across unlinked software applications that address dierent stages of the product life cycle. This paper presents a product data model capable of capturing product life cycle information, and in particular its utilization for representing manufacturing information is described. A manufacturing data model that depicts the capabilities of manufacturing cells in terms of their processes and resources is also introduced. The potential bene®ts of using these data models to support design for manufacture are shown through a case study. The case study includes implementation of the models, their utilization representing a product and three manufacturing facilities, and demonstrates their value in the redesign of a component.

Recent research on ‘engineering design’ is expanding to consider methods, tools and frameworks aimed at assisting designers in the process of developing sustainable products. Some of these new approaches highlight the importance and advantages of applying biology, chemistry and human-environment health, concepts and principles at the design stage of the product development process. The successful application of these approaches also requires overcoming a number of challenges. Two particular issues currently being investigated are: 1) the contradictory and sometimes misleading use of concepts regarding what a sustainable product is; and 2) the lack of sustainable parameters to evaluate how sustainable a product is. This paper presents a synthesis of the Total-Beauty theoretical framework, based on the study reported in a previous paper. Then, a process to redesign products using BioThinking, is proposed followed by its application in the redesign of a product. The process is original because it shows how the core concepts are considered in all the steps of a design process and not just in the specification and evaluation steps. The redesign is used as a case study to show its utility. The paper includes the synthesis of evaluation parameters based on BioThinking to both assess the sustainability of products, and compare the redesigned product against the original design. In the end of the paper, a discussion of the design process and the results of the case study will be presented.

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