ECO-Boat MOL Capturing Data from Real Use of the Product

Abstract

In many industries, such as leisure boat production, product design and process engineering are often based on diffuse criteria and a lack of data about the actual use of the products. If design and process development are not based on facts, there is a great risk of setting the wrong quality criteria and performance requirements. In the leisure boat industry the lack of data from how customers actually use their products results in product design based on experience (looking backwards), subjective judgments and input from certain customers or key persons. This often results in too high or wrong quality standards and consequently over-processing. ECO-boat MOL has studied this situation in the leisure boat industry. The paper describes how this research project has approached the need for more fact-based design through three different sources. The project also (re)defines work processes in design and production that take advantage of the new data and information.

Information Quality in PLM: A Product Design Perspective

“…While the availability of new information sources, such as usage information in design, provides new opportunities to improve products (see [3], [7]), newly created information flows and new kinds of information can introduce problems along the lifecycle. Feeding usage information into the BOL phase, for instance, can cause issues in related decision-making processes.…”

“…Backwards-directed flows are typically optional and allow optimization and control of processes. One recent example for optimization is the improvement of product design through the integration of usage information from the MOL phase -this approach is sometimes called 'fact-based design' [7].…”

Virtualization of Sea Trials for Smart Prototype Testing

“…It is necessary to compress development cycles [5] to optimize the vessel development process towards high-quality products without compromising the financial feasibility of the developments. In recent years, concepts like concurrent engineering [6] have been applied to the domain of vessel development [7].…”

Applying Closed-Loop Product Lifecycle Management to Enable Fact Based Design of Boats

“…In other domains different approaches towards product design and development processes which are not based merely on personal experience but also on actual product usage informationlike fact-based designhave emerged over the recent years [1]. In fact-based design, in-situ information about product usage (usage information) is collected and consequently integrated into decision-making processes [2].…”

“…This often results in too high or wrong quality-standards and consequently over-processing. [1] However, a systematic product development approach needs to combine the knowledge from people that know the customers' demands and service requirements with that of the craftsmen producing the vessel. Product development research has explored several approaches, like concurrent engineering as a means to capture product usage information and mobilize them to enable reuse of the gained knowledge in the product development process [3].…”