A methodology of integrating affective design with defining engineering specifications for product design

Affective design and the determination of engineering specifications are commonly conducted separately in early product design stage. Generally, designers and engineers are required to determine the settings of design attributes (for affective design) and engineering requirements (for engineering design), respectively, for new products. Some design attributes and some engineering requirements could be common. However, the settings of the design attributes and engineering requirements could be different because of the separation of the two processes. In previous studies, a methodology that considers the determination of the settings of the design attributes and engineering requirements simultaneously was not found. To bridge this gap, a methodology for considering affective design and the determination of engineering specifications of a new product simultaneously is proposed. The proposed methodology mainly involves generation of customer satisfaction models, formulation of a multi-objective optimisation model and its solving using a chaos-based NSGA-II. To illustrate and validate the proposed methodology, a case study of mobile phone design was conducted. A validation test was conducted and the test results showed that the customer satisfaction values obtained based on the proposed methodology were higher than those obtained based on the combined standalone quality function deployment and standalone affective design approach.     

A unified framework for knowledge based spectrum analysis

A unified approach for the development of a knowledge-based spectral analysis system is presented. Most knowledge available in the literature is based on the comparison of one method with a few competing methods. This problem is offset by setting up performing indexes on a common framework. The importance of using psychometric tools during knowledge acquisition is discussed, and the repertory grid and ADCLUS (additive clustering) model are shown to yield adequate results. A framework for representing knowledge in spectral analysis is provided. The use strategy provides an environment where spectral analysis methodological research can be constructed     

A technology selection framework for integrating manufacturing within a supply chain

This paper describes a structured analytical approach for selecting a manufacturing technology. A framework consisting of six integrated steps is proposed by considering the growing importance of supply chains in manufacturing organisations. The framework makes use of the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) approach combined with strategic assessment model (SAM) to evaluate and select the technologies appropriate for providing overall competitive advantage. The framework is intended to assist industrial managers in promoting manufacturing and supply chain collaboration and co-ordination by including intra-organisational perspective in their organisational technology selection decision making process.     

Robust hybrid name disambiguation framework for large databases

In many databases, science bibliography database for example, name attribute is the most commonly chosen identifier to identify entities. However, names are often ambiguous and not always unique which cause problems in many fields. Name disambiguation is a non-trivial task in data management that aims to properly distinguish different entities which share the same name, particularly for large databases like digital libraries, as only limited information can be used to identify authors’ name. In digital libraries, ambiguous author names occur due to the existence of multiple authors with the same name or different name variations for the same person. Also known as name disambiguation, most of the previous works to solve this issue often employ hierarchical clustering approaches based on information inside the citation records, e.g. co-authors and publication titles. In this paper, we focus on proposing a robust hybrid name disambiguation framework that is not only applicable for digital libraries but also can be easily extended to other application based on different data sources. We propose a web pages genre identification component to identify the genre of a web page, e.g. whether the page is a personal homepage. In addition, we propose a re-clustering model based on multidimensional scaling that can further improve the performance of name disambiguation. We evaluated our approach on known corpora, and the favorable experiment results indicated that our proposed framework is feasible.     

A manufacturing system design framework for computer aided industrial engineering

This paper describes a framework that formalizes within a concurrent engineering approach the key steps in the process of manufacturing systems design. Many of the functions performed by industrial engineers, ergonomists and process planners are included in the framework and may be used iteratively as design detail is progressively added. The paper describes the framework and prototype software, indicates how the framework is evaluated and illustrates how a workplace may be designed. The emphasis of the work is the design of human centred manual assembly systems. The overall objective of the work is to improve the process of manufacturing systems design.     

A nonlinear dynamical systems framework for structural diagnosis and prognosis

This work aims to establish a nonlinear dynamics framework for diagnosis and prognosis in structural dynamic systems. The objective is to develop an analytically sound means for extracting features, which can be used to characterize damage, from modal-based input-output data in complex hybrid structures with heterogeneous materials and many components. Although systems like this are complex in nature, the premise of the work here is that damage initiates and evolves in the same phenomenological way regardless of the physical system according to nonlinear dynamic processes. That is, bifurcations occur in healthy systems as a result of damage. By projecting a priori the equations of motion of high-dimensional structural dynamic systems onto lower dimensional center, or so-called ‘damage’, manifolds, it is demonstrated that model reduction near bifurcations might be a useful way to identify certain features in the input-output data that are helpful in identifying damage. Normal forms describing local co-dimension one and two bifurcations (e.g. transcritical, subcritical pitchfork, and asymmetric pitchfork bifurcations) are assumed to govern the initiation and evolution of damage in a low-order model. Real-world complications in damage prognosis involving spatial bifurcations, global bifurcation phenomena, and the sensitivity of damage to small changes in initial conditions are also briefly discussed.     

An automated framework for compiling and integrating chemical hazard data

Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy - Comparative chemical hazard assessment, which compares hazards for several endpoints across several chemicals, can be used for a variety of purposes...     

A framework for the design of knowledge management systems in eco-design

Eco-design is becoming a crucial challenge for many companies. The effective integration of environmental concerns into design is linked to the development of Knowledge Management Systems (KMS). In this context, this paper proposes a framework to support the design of KMS for eco-design. This framework consists of two complementary parts linked to the main knowledge management strategies that KMS generally support. The first part of the framework concerns codification strategy and relies on an eco-design process reference model and the related adaptation of the GAMETH^® method used to locate and evaluate crucial knowledge systematically. The second part of the framework concerns the personalisation strategy. In this paper we propose to exploit the community of practice (CoP) theory by: (1) proposing guidelines defining the structural features of CoPs and (2) adapting a tool landscape providing insight on CoP instrumentation. Both guidelines support the setting up of a specific CoP. The exploitation of the framework is illustrated on a real case study.     

A dynamic knowledge management framework for the high value manufacturing industry

Dynamic knowledge management (KM) is a combination of cultural and technological factors, including the cultural factors of people and their motivations, technological factors of content and infrastructure and, where these both come together, interface factors. In this paper a dynamic KM framework is described in the context of employees being motivated to create profit for their company through product development in high value manufacturing. It is reported how the framework was discussed during a meeting of the collaborating company's (BAE Systems) project stakeholders. Participants agreed the framework would have most benefit at the start of the product lifecycle before key decisions were made. The framework has been designed to support organisational learning and to reward employees that improve the position of the company in the market place.     

Towards cooperative frameworks for modeling and integrating biological processes knowledge

Data organization has become a strategic target for biologists due to the increasing volume of genomic data available for them. For this purpose, we need a complete knowledge model for representing biological system. In this paper, we deal with both processes for the creation and integration of shareable, reusable domain models within biology, which is a critical issue. In particular, this work introduces a new cooperative development approach for biology ontologies. This approach is based on the integration of the ontologies supplied by different human experts. Two experiments in biological domains are presented and their results discussed.     

A framework for developing engineering design ontologies within the aerospace industry

This paper presents a framework for developing engineering design ontologies within the aerospace industry. The aim of this approach is to strengthen the modularity and reuse of engineering design ontologies to support knowledge management initiatives within the aerospace industry. Successful development and effective utilisation of engineering ontologies strongly depends on the method/framework used to develop them. Ensuring modularity in ontology design is essential for engineering design activities due to the complexity of knowledge that is required to be brought together to support the product design decision-making process. The proposed approach adopts best practices from previous ontology development methods, but focuses on encouraging modular architectural ontology design. The framework is comprised of three phases namely: (1) Ontology design and development; (2) Ontology validation and (3) Implementation of ontology structure. A qualitative research methodology is employed which is composed of four phases. The first phase defines the capture of knowledge required for the framework development, followed by the ontology framework development, iterative refinement of engineering ontologies and ontology validation through case studies and experts’ opinion. The ontology-based framework is applied in the combustor and casing aerospace engineering domain. The modular ontologies developed as a result of applying the framework and are used in a case study to restructure and improve the accessibility of information on a product design information-sharing platform. Additionally, domain experts within the aerospace industry validated the strengths, benefits and limitations of the framework. Due to the modular nature of the developed ontologies, they were also employed to support other project initiatives within the case study company such as role-based computing (RBC), IT modernisation activity and knowledge management implementation across the sponsoring organisation. The major benefit of this approach is in the reduction of man-hours required for maintaining engineering design ontologies. Furthermore, this approach strengthens reuse of ontology knowledge and encourages modularity in the design and development of engineering ontologies.     

A comparison of swarm intelligence algorithms for structural engineering optimization

This paper compares the performance of three swarm intelligence algorithms for the optimization of hard engineering problems. The algorithms tested were bacterial foraging optimization (BFO), particle swarm optimization (PSO), and artificial bee colony (ABC). Besides the regular BFO, two other variants reported in the literature were also included in the study: adaptive BFO and swarming BFO. Both PSO and ABC were tested using the regular algorithm and variants that include explosion (mass extinction). Three optimization problems of structural engineering were used: minimization of the cost of a welded beam, minimization of the construction cost of a pressure vessel, and minimization of the total weight of a 10‐bar plane truss. All problems are strongly constrained. The algorithms were evaluated using two criteria: quality of solutions and the number of function evaluations. The results show that PSO presented the best balance between these two criteria. For the optimization problems approached in this paper, we can also conclude that the explosion procedure resulted in no significant improvements. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A novel approach for analysing evolutional motivation of empirical engineering knowledge

Empirical engineering knowledge (EEK), a specific technical know-how about solving engineering problems, is frequently accumulated and reused in this era of mass innovation and knowledge-driven economy. Since EEK is abidingly evolving because of the intense business competitions, continual technical renovations and wide industrial concern, it’s a new challenge both in theories and applications of knowledge management to analyse EEK evolution and its motivations. This paper proposes a novel approach to tackle this non-trivial issue. Based on the constructed domain hierarchy and EEK networks, EEK clusters are grouped and represented with populations, latent topics and distributions. Then four kinds of evolutional patterns are defined and recognised from the EEK clusters in neighbouring time intervals. The evolutional motivations of these patterns are discovered from the important evolutional events, with the proposed abductive reasoning algorithm. This paper also integrates all techniques, and implements a knowledge management system EEK-KEAS in computer-aided design (CAD), a typical engineering field. Experimental result shows that EEK-KEAS operations well in revealing the evolutional motivations of CAD EEKs, and outperforms the former approaches in feasibility and effectiveness, thereby opening up a novel way for further understanding the evolution of EEK.     

Materials selection for an automotive structure by integrating structural optimization with environmental impact assessment

Sustainable product development of an automotive structure requires a balanced approach towards technological, economical and ecological aspects. Current paper shows the application of a structural optimization system to the optimal choice of foams as a core material for sandwiches with aluminum alloy faces, for the use as floor panels in the bottom structure of a concept car. The minimization problem for the weight of the entire bottom structure under static load conditions, including stiffness, strength and buckling constraints, is formulated and solved for each material application. In addition to optimal (minimized) mass and materials' price used for selection of foams, the assessment of an environmental impact of materials-candidates during the entire life cycle of the structure is considered.     

Implementation of an inquisitive chatbot for database supported knowledge bases

Chatbot is a piece of software that responds to natural language input and attempts to hold a conversation in a way that imitates a real person. Some chatbots are used for entertainment purposes, while others for business and commercial purposes. Chatbots are getting a lot of attention from business community right now as they can save costs in customer service centers and can handle multiple clients at a time. Successful implementation of a chatbot calls for correct analysis of user’s query by the bot and the formation of the correct response that should be given to the user. In many scenarios the information available from the user’s query is inadequate to provide the answer. In such contexts, the chatbot needs to be inquisitive so that it will be more interactive and can mimic a more natural human interaction. This paper reports the implementation of an inquisitive chatbot, which finds the missing data in query and probes the questions to users to collect data that are required to answer the query. Through this implementation, the level of interactivity between the user and the chatbot is improved.     

A co-operation framework for product–process integration in engineering design

Many different studies have stressed the importance of co-operation in engineering design. This paper is based on an empirical study carried out over 18 months and based on fieldwork where the researcher worked in a design team as a mechanical engineer. The question of product–process integration is particularly critical in mechanical engineering and requires the development of specific co-operative procedures. Our results stress the importance of artefacts as intermediary objects in the design process and more specifically in the development of co-operative processes. We developed a framework centred on three conceptual levels:

• At product level, where we developed specific artefacts within a CAD environment, referred to herein as co-operating features,

• At organisation level, where we stress the importance of developing organisational learning and a new interface role,

• At actor level, where we stress the importance of developing reflective practices.

This conceptual framework aims to provide a foundation to develop instrumental settings for design co-operation.     

A conceptual framework for combining artificial intelligence and optimization in engineering design

Research in artificial intelligence and optimization (OR) has had significant impact on the formulation and solution of computational methods in engineering design. This paper presents a conceptual framework for understanding a more powerful technology that is evolving from a combination of these approaches. The paper first proposes generalized representations of engineering design models that involve quantitative and qualitative aspects. Second, it presents a general classification of AI and OR models in terms of model attributes, in order to establish mappings with generic solution techniques. Third, the requirements of solution methods are discussed, as well as several schemes for the integration of AI and optimization to identify future research directions. Several specific approaches are included to illustrate various ways in which AI and optimization can be combined for tackling computational design models.     

Wind field simulation for structural engineering purposes

This paper offers a survey of the issue of wind velocity modelling and simulation; the theme is studied considering stationary multivariate stochastic process, according to the prescribed cross-spectral density matrix. It also analyses extension to generation of vector fields and compares AR, ARMA and Shinozuka–Deodatis approaches in application to both small and real size examples. A number of ‘quality indices’ are chosen and used to assess the performance of the different numerical procedures. Wavelets are used together with standard Fourier transform in the process of checking the quality of the signals generated. Finally, the present study provides some guidelines concerning the optimal parameters to be chosen for the application of AR and ARMA procedures and a comment on the numerical efficiency of the different generation algorithms. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Low-cost test rig for structural engineering tests

As a result of the lack of funds, many researchers in developing countries are faced with the problem of acquiring suitable laboratory equipment to perform tests. This paper discusses how to set up a low-cost structural test-rig out of steel I-Beams and stanchions, steel rods and plates, ordinary car jacks and a suitable scale. Points of vital importance to the proper functioning of the rig are outlined as well as its limitations.