A Study of the Application of Design Assets in Product Development

Abstract

The introduction of product platforms has been acknowledged as a strategic enabler for increased business competitiveness. A vast body of research has described different aspects of platforms, but little work has been done on defining or delimiting the different types of elements that may build up a platform. Design assets include platform elements that are not commonly considered as a part of a platform. Previous research has suggested the introduction of formalized design assets to systematically extend an items-based platform with intangible elements. These are transdisciplinary objects, specifically prepared for reuse between projects to provide support for a wide range of engineering activities: specialized CAD geometry, working methods, spread sheets, function models or different types of knowledge representations, among others. The presented research is part of a larger project seeking to improve the collaboration between product development and manufacturing. This paper focuses on the use of potential and formal design assets at a development department of a global manufacturer of consumer products. The results show that the application of formal design assets depends on several factors, such as the level of professional experience and individual working styles. The contribution of the paper is a description of which formal and informal design assets that are used and a discussion on how the formal assets can be better utilized.

New combination of methods for supporting a simplified set-based design approach

“…Notes and photos were taken to document the research, and at least two researchers were present in workshops conducted together with industrial partners. The latter have confirmed the feasibility of the results gained, as is described in Gustafsson et al (2016), in Raudberget et al (2018), and in Ström et al (2016A;2016B;2023). The results have made it possible to further improve the application of the tested methods in the work presented here.…”

“…The effort to introduce the methodology in an industrial context is in line with previous experience from applications of ISBD, EF-M models, AD, and extended causal diagrams. Based on the results from previous industrial case studies (Gustafsson et al, 2016;Raudberget et al, 2018;Ström et al, 2016A;Ström et al, 2016B;), involving some of the applied methods and the two case studies in this research, the time for introduction of the proposed process in an industrial context is expected to be two to three working days. Development engineers that took part in the introduction of the methods used in the approach were able to compare, in a qualitative manner, the new way of working with their previous.…”

Analysis of the perception and presence of design in the fruit and vegetable cluster: The case of southeast Spain

“…This definition supports the notion that various objects have been designed in agriculture to achieve specific objectives (plant varieties, animal breeds, cropping, farming systems, landscapes, decision support systems, agricultural implements, or inputs) (Prost et al 2017). Thus, for this study, design is understood as the structured multidisciplinary work process that aims to create products (Raudberget et al 2022;Roxas et al 2023), images, spaces (Trubetskaya et al 2023), services (Brinkman et al 2023) and digital/multimedia content (Liu et al 2019).…”