Antti Pulkkinen

Piping project is an uncertainty factor in power plant project. The current methods used in estimating costs in tendering phase are unreliable. The methods used for­modelling piping engineering are also imprecise. Piping design is one of the most significant cost drivers in plant design. Unreliability of estimations and an obvious lack of performance in piping design are regarded as outcomes of poor under­standing of the piping engineering process and outdated fashion of communica­tion between organisations. Companies taking part in a project have different information systems. Several meanings on same concepts exists. Introducing general project model, as a tem­plate, is expected to increase product data sharing and mutual understanding be­tween piping project participants. It also enables enhanced exploitation of concurrent engineering paradigm. As a result of the research a prototype software was demonstrated. The prototype was aimed for project and product data plan­ning, estimating and management. Piping system has various interrelationships with other systems in power plant. Thus piping engineering has an affect on most of the companies participating plant realisation. Sub-projects of a plant project have to be done concurrently. In order to decrease piping project duration, activities have to be overlapped and earlier phase by phase engineering process model is no longer valid. Thus a model for capturing project management knowledge has been developed.

Open Product Development Methodology is the future of design methodology. It contains three phases: 1. Proactive, strategy-based construction of product development knowledge 2. Fast, efficient product development utilising the right resources 3. Guarantee of product life-cycle knowledge. Each phase has its own methods, of which the following are presented in this chapter: Company Strategic Landscape, Product Family Design and Configuration Process, and the Combined Variation of Product, Manufacturing Processes and Networks. It is important to strengthen the head designer’s role and that the Product Architect takes new responsibilities in design, such as in the environmental review stage.

Our focus is on the investigation of variety from the viewpoint of a product, manufacturing processes and production network and from their mutual interaction. The presented work is mainly carried out as an industrial case study, where a gearbox product family forms a target for research. Within this family the product variety and the process variety is modelled and their relationships studied. Preliminary results are presented. We highlight the product variety, which the manufacturing unit is facing through the manufacturing schedule. The interaction between parts and manufacturing system becomes visible in manufacturing environment and will change dynamically according to schedule.

For a mass-producing company, a remarkable change with Lean Production [1] and Mass Customisation [2] paradigms has been the tendency to produce goods when the order has been received. As in the mass production the design and production efforts are followed by logistics and sales activities of different forms, in mass customisation the order is quite the opposite. In the latter paradigm the product is not only made to order, but also designed to order. Actually, the design approach can vary from pure standardisation to pure customisation. Corresponding to these approaches there is a continuum of product structuring strategies between standardization and customisation [3]. Apart from structuring the product, it is vital to structure also the delivery processes and systems to enable fast and reliable deliveries. [4] Traditionally, a product is also delivered to order in projecting business. Most of the work is done to the order, i.e. the product is sold and designed, some ofthe components are made, and most of assembly is done to order. Thus, projecting can be held as the opposite paradigm to the mass production and close to the mass customisation. However, a typical case of projecting is different from the case of mass customization, e.g. the production volume is much less in projecting. In fact, the change from projecting to systemic customization is as significant as for the mass production with the mass customization. The aspects of change from mass production to lean production [1] or mass customization [2] have already been studied. Instead, in this paper we study the relation in structuring product and business for a projecting company, aiming to improve the engineering productivity. The approach is quite different from the mentioned studies. We have found that not a single product structuring strategy, like pure standardization, is adequate. We argue that many product structuring strategies can and should be applied in order to support and balance the engineering design in a projecting company. This is valid even in a single product family, as we presented in the case company.

The aim of paper is to present a framework for emerging design methodology. The framework constitutes the approach to the design engineering of products and product families for contributing to the concept of concurrent enterprising. The factors facilitating the targeted application areas are pooled as the framework of Design for Procurement (DfP). The framework is supposed to bind together the aspects of research and development projects that operate in the application area. The framework was first recognized with the conjoint workshop of both practitioners from industry and the academic participants. The framework was used as the basis for the literature study in the relevant fields. The paper combines the findings of the workshop and the literature study. Currently three case studies in industrial companies are being carried out. Their viewpoints to the framework support the framework and further results are predicted in the discussion.

The concept of Digital Extended Enterprise is presented as a form of highly competitive manufacturing network. The maturity model of digital extended enterprise is defined as a method for the management of the development of manufacturing networks. The research methods of this paper are literature studies in many topics as well as action research with five industrial companies. Our findings support the use of the digital maturity model in the qualitative assessment of development projects. The quantified business indicators can be used for evaluating the attained benefits, while the maturity model is used for assessing the development efforts and steps taken. A dependency matrix for studying the maturity model is defined. We address the oversimplification problem of maturity modelling and suggest the use of dependency matrix to alleviate the oversimplification problem, to improve the maturity model and to enhance the knowledge on the development of digital extended enterprise.

Our focus is on the investigation of variety from the viewpoint of a product, manufacturing processes and production network and from their mutual interaction. The presented work is mainly carried out as an industrial case study, where a gearbox product family forms a target for research. Within this family the product variety and the process variety is modelled and their relationships studied. Preliminary results are presented. We highlight the product variety, which the manufacturing unit is facing through the manufacturing schedule. The interaction between parts and manufacturing system becomes visible in manufacturing environment and will change dynamically according to schedule.

For the description of product family a number of modelling methods exist in literature. These methods describe individual applied research. Thus, they are limited for the practical and singular purposes. Research on the product family development based on theory is emerging. The product family development is related with the product architecture, product family architecture, product platform as well as configurable product. The separate meaning of the product platforms and configurable products are accepted in the literature. Opposite to this, product architecture and product family architecture are often treated as synonyms. In this article differences between product architecture and product family architecture are discussed. The term product architecture should be used when a company wants to redesign individual product because of the certain benefit from one or more phases of life cycle. When commonality and variety should be planned for a related group of products (product var...

Currently there exists a need to produce product variants in faster and faster pace due to turbulent markets. Modular product structures are regarded as suitable for this. However committing to the modular product family is normally considered as a commitment to a certain architecture, which is often seen inflexible when compared to one-off-product development. Dynamic Modularisation (Dymo) business and product development paradigm aims to maintain the agility of one-off-product development when producing modular product families [1,2]. Now Dymo is developing from a proposed paradigm to an industrial practice. At this stage there is now experiences available, what kind of challenges a company is about to face when it adapts the Dymo type way of working. In this paper we present the fundamental background behind Dymo and an example of the implementation of Dymo. We discuss challenges in implementation and propose possible solutions.

Piping project is an uncertainty factor in power plant project. The current methods used in estimating costs in tendering phase are unreliable. The methods used for­modelling piping engineering are also imprecise. Piping design is one of the most significant cost drivers in plant design. Unreliability of estimations and an obvious lack of performance in piping design are regarded as outcomes of poor under­standing of the piping engineering process and outdated fashion of communica­tion between organisations. Companies taking part in a project have different information systems. Several meanings on same concepts exists. Introducing general project model, as a tem­plate, is expected to increase product data sharing and mutual understanding be­tween piping project participants. It also enables enhanced exploitation of concurrent engineering paradigm. As a result of the research a prototype software was demonstrated. The prototype was aimed for project and product data plan­ning, estimating and management. Piping system has various interrelationships with other systems in power plant. Thus piping engineering has an affect on most of the companies participating plant realisation. Sub-projects of a plant project have to be done concurrently. In order to decrease piping project duration, activities have to be overlapped and earlier phase by phase engineering process model is no longer valid. Thus a model for capturing project management knowledge has been developed.

Aim of our research is to develop support for better human-machine system design. The fundamental idea of the support introduced in this paper is based on virtual engineering based knowledge transfer within a product life, between designers and other stakeholders. This paper proposes a holistic practical framework model which describes needed elements to conduct the knowledge transfer, i.e. PLM model and enabling embodiments of the model. Examples of the model usage are described in the paper as well. The practical model is based on case studies.

Complexity of different systems is often seen as a negative issue in companies because it generates costs. Therefore, the reduction and avoidance of complexity are design strategies for coping with the complexity in product development. This paper presents a method to evaluate structural complexity of a product family at an early phase of the design process. The method is based on Pugh’s concept evaluation matrix. In this paper, the criteria for structural complexity evaluation of a product family are defined and the applicability, benefits and limitations of the used method were evaluated.

The aim of paper is to present a framework for emerging design methodology. The framework constitutes the approach to the design engineering of products and product families for contributing to the concept of concurrent enterprising. The factors facilitating the targeted application areas are pooled as the framework of Design for Procurement (DfP). The framework is supposed to bind together the aspects of research and development projects that operate in the application area. The framework was first recognized with the conjoint workshop of both practitioners from industry and the academic participants. The framework was used as the basis for the literature study in the relevant fields. The paper combines the findings of the workshop and the literature study. Currently three case studies in industrial companies are being carried out. Their viewpoints to the framework support the framework and further results are predicted in the discussion.

ABSTRACT Proceedings of PLM10, ISBN 978-3-9812025-3-3 The paper presents a research and development initiative, which addresses the procedures and organization of global value system and product management for business processes. The essential research question of the initiative is: How to integrate and develop existing theories on product processes, product lifecycle management and organization of the value systems to manage high variety products? The research plan for the initiative is divided into several strategic areas, which include the topics; requirement and engineering change management in global value systems, management of the value systems, models and systems for managing product information in global environment, and lean and beyond. The common approach to all areas is the benchmarking of promising approaches, best practices, methods and applications. The enhanced benchmarking methods should compile background and concretize the common target for the projects of the initiative The 7th International Conference on Product Lifecycle Management, Bremen, 12 - 14 July 2010

Open Product Development Methodology is the future of design methodology. It contains three phases: 1. Proactive, strategy-based construction of product development knowledge 2. Fast, efficient product development utilising the right resources 3. Guarantee of product life-cycle knowledge. Each phase has its own methods, of which the following are presented in this chapter: Company Strategic Landscape, Product Family Design and Configuration Process, and the Combined Variation of Product, Manufacturing Processes and Networks. It is important to strengthen the head designer’s role and that the Product Architect takes new responsibilities in design, such as in the environmental review stage.