Product Attribute Function Deployment (PAFD) for Decision-Based Conceptual Design

The critical product planning phase, early in the product development cycle, requires a design tool to establish engineering priorities, select the preferred design concept, and set target levels of engineering performance while considering the needs of both the consumer and producer. The quality function deployment (QFD) method was developed as a design process tool to translate customer needs into engineering characteristics; however, limitations have been identified in using the QFD method for product planning. In this paper, a new design tool called product attribute function deployment (PAFD), based on the principles of decision-based design (DBD), is introduced as a decision-theoretic, enterprise-level process tool to guide the conceptual design phase. The PAFD method extends the qualitative matrix principles of QFD while utilizing the quantitative decision-making processes of DBD. The PAFD method is built upon established methods in engineering, marketing, and decision analysis to eliminate the need for the user ratings and rankings of performance, priority, and attribute coupling in the QFD method. The differences between the QFD and the PAFD processes are compared and contrasted, and the conceptual design of an automotive manifold absolute pressure sensor is used as a case study to demonstrate the features and benefits of the PAFD method.     

Effects of concurrent engineering on make-to-order products

An increasing number of manufacturing organizations are using concurrent engineering product development processes, which rely on parallel scheduling of activities throughout the product development cycle. This study examines the impact of such practices on product development time, product quality, and delivery leadtime. Using data obtained from structured interviews with product managers and engineers, six hypotheses are tested using a sample of 31 make-to-order (MTO) products from several industries. The results suggest that concurrent engineering may he appropriate for incremental innovation, but may have some “hidden costs” in the form of increased defects when applied to new “breakthrough” innovations. However, this strategy may be entirely suited to a specific customer segment that is willing to work with the manufacturer on debugging the product in the field. The study points out the importance of considering the hidden costs of concurrent engineering, and discusses the strategic implications of such decisions for technology managers     

高职电子商务专业学生核心能力分析

从专业分工的角度看,电子商务应毫不犹豫以商务为主,技术层面的东西以理解为主,对技术感兴趣的实在应该去计算机、软件工程、软件开发等系部,而不是电子商务.网络公司对商务类岗位的要求,也就是电子商务专业学生应该精心打造的核心能力.概括来说,主要职位有:销售人员、渠道人员、客服人员、采购人员、市场人员、业务发展人员.     

基于移动通信客户行为分析的精确营销策略研究

随着全业务和3G运营的发展,粗放式的营销方式已明显滞后于电信市场的发展。将精细化营销、数据挖掘等营销管理理念和智能计算方法运用到电信产品营销中,提出了基于移动通信客户行为分析的精确营销策略模型。本模型依据客户行为分别建立客户价值模型、客户粘性模型、客户异动模型和客户需求鉴别模型,利用4个模型构建营销矩阵,实现客户群细分,针对不同客户实施不同保有和营销策略并对模型实施应用评估。精确营销策略能够为营销队伍提供常规化营销支持服务,提升企业市场竞争力。     

Engineering's interactions with marketing groups in anengineering-driven organization

It is widely acknowledged that engineering personnel should work with marketing and sales personnel to increase the chances of market acceptance of new product ideas. While many studies have shown that products are more likely to succeed when this integration occurs, there has been little observation of the actual interactions and the underlying sources of communication difficulties. This paper, based on nine months of participant observation in a single firm in the computer industry, presents engineering objections to information from marketing groups and then discusses the complaints marketing people have about engineering. The author argues that for complex systems products in technology-driven environments, there may not be a dyadic interaction between marketing and engineering but rather many conflicting requirements coming from marketing groups representing different customer groups. In such situations, decisions concerning the overall system architecture may be among the most critical strategic decisions     

Improved Software Reliability Through Requirements Verification

Requirement errors discovered early in the development process are several orders of magnitude less expensive to fix than if these same errors are discovered late in the development process. Therefore, it is expedient to investigate methods for discovering requirement errors early in the development process. This article decribes a technique to improve software reliability through verifying requirements early in the software development process. The technique involves the generation of a System Verification Diagram (SVD) for each set of functional requirements. The prime purpose of developing SVDs is to serve as a tool for verifying the functional consistency and completeness of a requirement specification. In so doing, it also becomes an excellent communication device for reviewing the requirements to assure that customer needs are not inaccurately portrayed.     

战场侦察监视信息融合体系结构研究

在多传感器信息融合的体系结构框架研究方面,借鉴典型的信息系统体系结构框架研究成果的基础上,采用系统工程方法和成熟的体系结构框架描述工具,对战场侦察监视多传感器信息融合系统的作战视图、系统视图和技术视图3个方面进行了研究。通过对多传感器信息融合的湾系结构框架需求分析、功能定义、流程分解、信息交换等的研究,提出了满足战场侦察监视作战需要的信息融合体系结构框架,为下一步研究奠定基础。     

Designing for people: integrating human factors into the productrealization process

The contributions that human factors might make to the development of a realistic but hypothetical product, a multimedia collaborative workstation, are described. It is pointed out that the human factors specialist must be able to work with marketing, systems engineering, and development in order to balance usability requirements with market constraints, system requirements, and development costs. The result should be that the product is not only desirable, but is useful and usable. A hypothetical product is followed through the four stages of the product realization process to illustrate the roles human factors specialists can play at each stage     

A Product and Process Modeling Based Approach to Study Cost Implications of Product Variety in Mass Customization

With the growing competition in businesses, satisfying customers' individual requirements has turned into a competitive edge. Highly diversified customer needs lead to not only high product variety but also the associated cost implications. In order to handle the complexity and intertwining relationships of variety and cost, a systematic approach is proposed based on product and process modeling. This approach includes two phases: phase I models product and process variety and studies their relationships; and phase II investigates the relationships between product variety and costs and identifies major additional cost contributors, namely variety cost drivers in the product family design. A case study is presented to demonstrate the feasibility and potential of the proposed approach     

电子战软件中组件式定时器的开发与应用

对现有的定时器模型进行了分析,分别指出了其中存在的问题,并给出了解决方案。通过组件式软件开发技术,将基于线程的定时器封装成组件,隐藏了复杂的内部实现细节,使设计人员可以更多地关注业务领域模型,提高整个软件开发团队的效率,减少软件出错,提高软件品质。     

Data Mining and Causal Modeling of Customer Behaviors

This paper shows how to apply data-mining and modeling methods to learn predictive models of customer behaviors from survey and behavioral data. The models predict transition rates of individual customers among states, including product adds and drops and account attrition rates. A key insight is that classification tree algorithms from data mining can be used to test conditional independence (Cl) relations among variables in large multivariate data sets. This suggests constructive techniques for (a) Building causal graph models from data; and (b) Using data to define the states of a dynamic transition process. The resulting models can be used to help optimize product offers, forecast demand for products, and plan marketing campaigns. We use several real data sets to illustrate how to: (a) Develop predictive models from survey data and from billing data, (b) Validate model assumptions by using classification trees to identify and test conditional independence relations, (c) Evaluate model performance compared to other (e.g., logistic regression or discriminant analysis) models using cross-validation, and (d) Recommend the next logical product to offer to each customer and the best customers to target for each product in order to maximize sales.     

支持大规模个性化需求描述的服务过程模型

传统的服务过程模型都是针对单个顾客的个性化需求,虽然能够满足顾客的个性化需求,但当大量的个性化需求到来时,需要为每一个需求建立独立的服务模型,导致整个服务过程模型的建立效率锐减、后期的维护成本增大。为此,提出了一种支持大规模个性化需求描述的服务过程模型(MPSPM),该服务过程模型首先将服务过程中的个性化需求按照功能、性能和价值三个方面进行总结和分类,并在此基础上给出基于可变点的满足大规模个性化需求的模型规范,以期在服务过程中使用最少的过程模型来满足大规模的顾客个性化需求。最后,以旅游服务为背景给出支持大规模的旅游个性化需求的服务过程模型,并开发出一款图形化建模工具来对该过程模型进行验证。     

Software reliability measurement

The measurement and analysis aspects of software reliability are described with the aim of providing software engineers and managers a sense of where and how software reliability measurements can be applied to their projects. Some background for understanding software reliability measurement is provided, and activities associated with measuring and analyzing software reliability are discussed in the context of the software product life cycle. The focus is on failures and the rate at which they occur. The thrust of reliability measurement and analysis is to specify what the customer needs in terms of reliability before a software product is built, to validate that these needs are met before delivery of the product to the customer, and to make sure that the customer's needs continue to be met after delivery     

Iterative multi-tier management information modeling

The management information models currently used in the Internet have several limitations. Some of them contain errors, are missing important features, or are difficult to understand. Second, standards bodies keep reinventing the wheel, which confuses the terminology (hence customers) and wastes precious time. Third, finding a good balance between too abstract, and overly detailed models is a tough challenge, rarely achieved in practice. Last, the learning curve of existing data models is too steep. We propose to alleviate these problems by adopting a new process for designing and standardizing management information models. It is inspired by two techniques form software engineering: the iterative and incremental software development process, which addresses the shortcomings of the waterfall process usually adhered to by the IETF and DMTF; and multi-tier models, which capture different perspectives (e.g., analysis, design, and implementation) of the information model. Our main innovations are management-architecture-neutral universal information models (UIMs), sharing of conceptual models by different standard bodies, and specialization of the people involved in designing the different layers of the models. Our new process takes into account a number of constraints identified in real-life environments.     

Compound semiconductor equipment manufacturers perform well in VLSI survey

Compound semiconductor equipment manufacturers are well represented in this year’s VLSI customer satisfaction survey. Conducted annually, the survey looks at equipment performance and customer service, and asks semiconductor manufacturing equipment users to rank suppliers on a 10 point scale. Equipment performance is measured in terms of: build quality, cost of ownership, uptime, software, usable throughput, quality of results, and product performance. For customer service, the measures are: process support, field engineering support, spares support, support after sales, technical leadership in the supplier’s field and the supplier’s overall commitment to supporting its customers’ needs.This is a short news story only. Visit www.three-fives.com for the latest advanced semiconductor industry news.     

From product-oriented development to technology-orienteddevelopment

In product-oriented development, customer requirements are developed first. The product is then designed to meet the requirements. This process is inefficient. In technology-oriented development, functional robustness of a product technology is first developed at the early stage of the process. The developed robust technology is then tuned to meet the requirements as they become available. This process is flexible, responsive, and cheaper. This paper explains the role of robust design in technology-oriented development. Shifting from product-oriented development to technology-oriented development is the key to: (a) restructuring the technology bases of Japan which are getting empty; and (b) regaining the competitive edge in quality and productivity which Japan once enjoyed     

The Active3D-Build: a Web-based civil engineering platform

We developed the Active3D-Build to improve civil engineering project management. This Web-based platform lets geographically dispersed project participants-from architects to electricians to plumbers-directly use and exchange project documents in a centralized virtual environment using a simple Web browser. A 3D visualization lets participants move around in the building being designed and obtain information about the objects that compose it. The Active3D-Lab is the software development arm of the Archimede Group, a civil engineering and facility management firm. The Active3DLab team includes three administrative staff members, eight developers, and three University of Bourgogne researchers. We're already marketing this product, and several enterprises use it in their civil engineering projects     

PCB企业出货条码标签管理软件的实现

PCB行业不同客户对出货内外标签的要求千差万异,为了方便、准确的打印出不同客户要求的出货标签,快速完成日常客户提出的新需求或变更,本文结合实际经验提出了出货条码标签管理的解决方案,并探讨了软件设计的思路和实现。     

基于优化GA-BP神经网络的金融产品营销预测

传统BP神经网络存在着网络结构参数确定过于依赖经验、易于陷入局部解等缺陷,为了改进BP神经网络模型的应用缺陷,提出优化GA-BP算法,通过GA算法优化BP神经网络拓扑结构和网络参数初始值的选取过程,并且为了验证模型的可行性,以某银行短期理财产品营销的客户历史数据作为实证研究对象,并通过与BP神经网络模型的对比实验,验证该模型可以更精确地预测银行理财产品的客户营销结果。实验结果表明将该模型用于对金融产品营销数据的仿真计算,可以更精确地预测未来营销结果。     

On identifying and estimating the cycle time of product development process

A timely introduction of a new product has become invaluable to the firm since the competitors are capable of introducing new or similar products once the driving technology becomes available. In order to generate a high profit from a new product, managers in other departments, such as marketing and production, have to plan ahead of time so that a seamless series of operations can be executed from product development to mass production. Needless to say, a competitive edge is given to the firm with better knowledge on product development process. Such knowledge, nonetheless, is not easy to acquire since a typical product development process is a complex network of many relationships among activities, which we call patterns. In addition to its complex topology, the product development process is often uncertain, iterative, and evolving over time; therefore, even studying individual islands of relationships (patterns) is challenging. Although there were some existing models that shed lights on some of these patterns, very little has been done to systematically analyze the product development process as a whole. In this paper, we develop analytical models that capture essential properties, including uncertainty, iteration and evolution, and estimate the cycle time of each pattern. With our proposed models, the cycle time of a set of patterns (or the whole product development process) can be effectively estimated. As demonstrated in a case study, our model provides valuable insights on how product development process progresses over time, while the corresponding time estimate can help managers to set appropriate manufacturing and marketing strategies.