Browsing by Author "Ewers, P."

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    A3 thinking approach to support knowledge-driven design
    (Springer, 2013-03-01) Mohd Saad, Norhairin; Al-Ashaab, Ahmed; Maksimovic, Maksim; Zhu, L.; Shehab, Essam; Ewers, P.; Kassam, A.
    Problem solving is a crucial skill in product development. Any lack of effective decision making at an early design stage will affect productivity and increase costs and the lead time for the other stages of the product development life cycle. This could be improved by the use of a simple and informative approach which allows the designers and engineers to make decisions in product design by providing useful knowledge. This paper presents a novel A3 thinking approach to problem solving in product design, and provides a new A3 template which is structured from a combination of customised elements (e.g. the 8 Disciplines approach) and reflection practice. This approach was validated using a case study in the Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) design issue for an automotive electrical sub-assembly product. The main advantage of the developed approach is to create and capture the useful knowledge in a simple manner. Moreover, the approach provides a reflection section allowing the designers to turn their experience of design problem solving into proper learning and to represent their understanding of the design solution. These will be systematically structured (e.g. as a design checklist) to be circulated and shared as a reference for future design projects. Thus, the recurrence of similar design problems will be prevented and will aid the designers in adopting the expected EMC test results.
  • Thumbnail Image
    ItemOpen Access
    Knowledge based environment to support product design validation
    (Elsevier Science B.V., Amsterdam., 2012-02-01T00:00:00Z) Al-Ashaab, Ahmed; Molyneaux, M.; Doultsinou, A.; Brunner, B.; Martínez, E.; Moliner, F.; Santamaría, V.; Tanjore, D.; Ewers, P.; Knight, G.
    A knowledge-based environment to support product design validation of refresh projects (projects with minor changes in comparison with previous ones) has been developed. This was achieved by capturing the relation between the design change of refresh projects with their required physical tests and the historical data of previous projects. The refresh projects constitute the majority, around 60%, of the total number of projects in the collaborating company. The knowledge-based environment framework (Knowledge-Based Environment to Support Product Design Validation - KBE-ProVal) has been implemented on the Product Lifecycle Management Platform, called Teamcenter. The KBE-ProVal development was based on the standardisation of the existing related documents while maintaining the traceability of the decision making process. This implementation will avoid repeating unnecessary and costly physical product tests, thus reducing time and costs for these refresh projects