Requirements and use of in‐service information in an engineering redesign task: Case studies from the aerospace industry

Abstract

This paper describes the research stimulated by a fundamental shift that is occurring in the manufacture and marketing of aero engines for commercial and defence purposes, away from the selling of products to the provision of services. This research was undertaken in an aerospace company, which designs and manufactures aero engines and also offers contracts, under which it remains responsible for the maintenance of engines. These contracts allow the company to collect far more data about the in-service performance of their engines than was previously available. This paper aims at identifying what parts of this in-service information are required when components or systems of existing engines need to be redesigned, because they have not performed as expected in service. In addition, this paper aims at understanding how designers use this in-service information in a redesign task. In an attempt to address these aims we analysed five case studies involving redesign of components or systems of an existing engine. The findings show that the in-service information accessed by the designers mainly contains the undesired physical actions (e.g. deterioration mechanisms, deterioration effects, etc.) and the causal chains of these undesired physical actions. We identified a pattern in the designers' actions regarding the use of these causal chains. The designers have generated several solutions that utilize these causal chains seen in the in-service information. The findings provide a sound basis for developing tools and methods to support designers in satisfying their in-service information requirements effectively in a redesign task.

Aesthetic Design Process: Descriptive Design Research and Ways Forward

“…In the field of engineering design research, several authors note the significance of the role of information in design activities [15]. The findings of the empirical research conducted by Marsh [16] in an aerospace industry suggest that, on average, 24 % of designers' time is spent in acquiring and providing information.…”

Shaping Products: Differences Between Expert and Novice Industrial Designers

“…In the field of engineering design, several studies have been undertaken to examine informational behaviour of engineering designers (e.g. Marsh, 1997;Jagtap and Johnson, 2010). A number of studies, undertaken in laboratory settings with experienced engineering designers or students, note the importance of information in the engineering design process (Eris, 2002;Jagtap et al, 2014a).…”

A collaborative system for capturing and reusing in-context design knowledge with an integrated representation model

“…The former is more focused on informal knowledge, emphasising a range of organisational issues such as the communication between designers in a distributed design team, while the latter involves technological issues such as the application of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to the codification of formal knowledge. Work on understanding through-life knowledge and information represents one of the trends for recent research in this area [27], [32]. In addition, despite it is difficult to codify informal knowledge, its importance has been highlighted by many researchers [14], [22], [33].…”