The paper presents the testing activity of a color-coded 3D visualization approach, developed to enhance the designers’ awareness during the conceptual design of a Product Service System (PSS). Protocol analysis is applied to eight design sessions to compare the behavior of different design teams when featuring printouts of color-coded CAD models, instead of spreadsheets with numerical tables, as carrier of value-related information. The analysis focuses on the time spent on the different activities during the sessions, highlighting the problem solving strategies and the consideration of PSS related aspects. The analysis shows that design teams featuring printouts of color-coded CAD models made a more extensive use of information during problem analysis, following a more structured design process, than teams using spreadsheets.

Providing added value to standalone products by adding services is at the core of product service systems (PSS) offered in manufacturing industries. Providing PSS requires a change not only in the way products are sold, but also in the way they are designed and developed. Engineers need to assess the value of a forthcoming PSS solution as soon as possible in the design process, addressing service-related issues that often fall outside their technical horizon and are challenging to seamlessly translate into the product technical requirements. The aim of the thesis is to investigate the early stages of aerospace product development, proposing methods and tools in order to improve the decision-making process, by enhancing the awareness of engineers and designers about the value contribution of different design alternatives. This academic work was performed through action research in close collaboration with major European aerospace manufacturers, research centers, and academic institutions conducting research in product development. The thesis first depicts the current practices and limitations of value assessment in early design stages, describing the increasing complexity of the aerospace development projects. Improvements for current practices are proposed in terms of developing value assessment capabilities coupled with requirements analysis and enhancing communication of the expected value contribution of a forthcoming solution.Second, this thesis proposes a conceptual approach aiming to enhance the communication between engineers and designers of the value-related aspects of a solution in early design stages. This approach allows for the visualization of the results of a value assessment activity using color-coded features on the product computer aided design (CAD) model. The characteristic of the approach is to allow for the simultaneous visualization of value scores and knowledge maturity in a unique representation. The approach is meant to increase the awareness about the multifaceted aspects of the value assessment of different designs, promoting tradeoff and impact analysis.In conclusion the thesis summarizes the findings of the empirical analysis, showing the need to complement requirements information with the assessment of value and knowledge maturity, and proposing color coded CAD models as technological enabler for the communication of the outcomes of the value assessment. Finally guidelines for future research are provided.

Making design decisions during preliminary design of a complex product, such as an aircraft, is a difficult activity. Numerous teams, acting on a global scale, take part in such design activities, approaching the problem from different perspectives and at different levels of granularity. Based on their position in the supply chain, design teams can focus either on the product as a whole, on its service-related aspects, or on the design of specific components of the product itself. The complexity of the design causes design teams to often base decisions on flawed or incomplete information, since stakeholders’ needs and perceptions are difficult to predict and communicate among teams. Such situations make it problematic for the developers to understand which design concept would be the most valuable to develop.Through collaboration with major European aerospace manufacturers, this research has highlighted the limits of current product development practices in addressing the promotion of more value-oriented design decisions in preliminary design This thesis has investigated the meaning of value in preliminary design decision-making and proposed a way forward towards its assessment and communication, introducing a value-oriented perspective to decision-making. This thesis builds on the Value Driven Design (VDD) concept increasingly discussed in the aerospace industry. VDD, in its original formulation, promotes the use of the mathematical optimization of a value function to select the most valuable design concepts. VDD is debated in literature, and an established VDD theory is not present. Contributing to such debate, this thesis proposes a Value Driven Design methodology for decision making in preliminary design that goes beyond the concept of mathematical optimization of a single value function. It considers the value of a design concept as encompassing stakeholders’ needs that are not always quantitatively quantifiable in a mathematical function, giving up with the idea of obtaining an absolute numerical measurement for value. The methodology takes the standpoint of an aircraft sub-system manufacturer. It merges concepts available in literature (i.e. Value Creation Strategy, Knowledge Maturity, Customer-Oriented Design Analysis) with the approaches developed from the findings of the empirical study. The methodology is based on correlating value aspects at different supply chain levels, assessing the maturity of the knowledge and computing the value of a design alternative compared to a baseline and a target. The use of colored features in CAD models to enhance the communication of value-related information is also proposed, and preliminary tested.Finally, guidelines for value assessment and visualization in preliminary design are provided, and the contributions to the VDD field are discussed together with the industrial implications of the methodology.

The paper proposes a conceptual framework, linking value-oriented criteria, simulation approaches and knowledge sources, to support the value-driven assessment of Product/Service Systems in the preliminary product development phase. The paper describes the peculiarities of the Multi Attribute Decision Making (MADM) problem in the PSS domain, identifying relevant categories of criteria to guide the preliminary value assessment of Product/Service Systems. Each criteria has been analyzed and linked to the appropriate simulation method, and each method has been further associated to people/roles in the Virtual Enterprise who might possess relevant knowledge to populate the models. The value assessment of an aircraft engine component has been used as case study for the definition of the value attributes. The list of generic value-related criteria, coupled with the respective simulation approaches has to be considered the main result of the paper.

During the 3rd CIRP IPS2 conference an approach toward communicating the value contribution of different PSS design alternatives using colour-coded CAD models was presented. Building on this work, the paper presents and discusses the results of the testing activity undertaken to verify the effectiveness of the colour-coding approach. The paper describes the setting and the findings of a series of PSS Design Experiments involving 8 design teams composed by master students in product development. Through the application of protocol analysis to the recorded design sessions, the paper compares the behavior of the design teams when using colour-coded CAD models, instead of QFD-like numerical tables, for value communication in PSS conceptual design.

The paper proposes an approach to increase the decision makers’ awareness at the gate, when evaluating PSS design alternatives from a lifecycle and value oriented perspective. The paper illustrates a lightweight value visualization tool, running on top of existing CAD systems, supporting value visualization of a given part or assembly, thanks to color coding. Information from value assessment is in this way translated into visual features of the CAD 3D model. Despite the approach is still on a start-up phase, an early mock-up of the tool has been developed and applied to a real aircraft engine component, in order to verify the feasibility of the approach.

Emerging from a study in the European aerospace industry, this paper identifies a gap in the way value-related information is communicated to designers of hardware in the preliminary stages of Product Service System (PSS) design. To fit this gap a Lifecycle Value Representation Approach, named LiVReA, that uses color-coded 3D CAD models to enable value information to be translated into visual features, is presented. Such approach aims at enhancing designers’ awareness of the value contribution of an early design concept on the overall PSS offer by complementing requirements-based information with criteria reflecting the fulfillment of customers and system value. The paper details the development of the approach, its underlying rationale, the results of preliminary validation activities and the potential for industrial application in the light of the currently available PSS representation tools.

Empirical investigation in the European aerospace industry has shown major drawbacks in the way design teams share information about the value contribution of a solution during early design stages. Across functions and organizations, design teams collaborate mainly using the contractual requirements as a basis, lacking of recording and communicating the contextual knowledge and the overall intent of product and service development projects. The paper proposes an approach that uses color-coded 3D CAD models for intra-cognitive communication of such value-related information to enhance the decision-making process in design. The paper first introduces the concept of product service systems and the benefits provided by visualization, afterwards it describes how value visualization can be implemented in a CAD 3D environment. A case study derived from the aerospace industry is presented to provide an example of application of the approach in a real industrial environment.

Emerging from an industrial case study in the aerospace industry, the paper proposes an approach to evaluate subsystem technology concepts from a life cycle perspective. The approach is composed by 5 main phases that aims to drive product designers towards more value-oriented design decisions. It is shown how different life cycle alternatives, such as the selling of a Product-Service- System instead of a traditional product, deeply impact the value of design alternatives. The described approach has been developed in collaboration with industrial partners and represents a potential instrument to enhance value-driven product design.

Recent literature in Systems Engineering has suggested the use of “value” to drive decision-making activities during preliminary design. Here the choice of a technology for a system/component is often oriented by the outcomes of a value analysis. However, to correctly evaluate design trade-offs, a visual link has to be established between these results and the product requirements/geometry. The paper proposes the use of color-coded 3D CAD models to support the visualization of value analysis results in a Stage-Gate® process. The approach has been developed and exemplified within a case study related to the design of an aero-engine component, and has been demonstrated using SIEMENS NX HD3D Visual Reporting. Eventually, the paper presents the results of verification activities conducted in academia.

The design of complex systems requires detailed analysis to be moved earlier in the design process. Value Driven Design methodologies extend the Requirements Management and Systems Engineering processes to reduce time and costs needed to identify the right solution direction to be pursued in detailed design. Emerging from the findings of an EU FP7 research project, the paper describes an approach for preliminary concept selection, named EVOKE, that uses value as a basis for decision. EVOKE enables quick value analysis to be executed by component manufacturers by taking as input a set of value dimensions and drivers communicated by the system integrators, together with information about the high-level engineering characteristics of the sub-systems under consideration. The approach and its technological enablers are described in detail through the use of a case study related to the design of new intermediate compressor case for turbofan engines.

The development of complex products, characterized by long lifecycles and deep supply chains, requires enhanced capabilities to assess, in an early design stage, the value of a solution not merely from a requirement fulfillment perspective. The paper proposes a conceptual scenario, described in terms of activities, inputs, outputs, actors and mechanisms, which details how aircraft components can be developed and assessed with a focus on their value contribution at system level. The scenario proposes a set of methodological and technological tools needed to enable value assessment in preliminary design, and has been created and preliminary validated together with major European aerospace manufacturers. The importance of being able to communicate the lifecycle value contribution of design solutions during the development work emerged clearly from the study. In this spirit, an approach to visualize such contribution directly in a 3D CAD model (across a set of value criteria, dimensions and drivers) has been proposed and it is currently under development.

The move towards offering product-service systems (PSS) requires the involvement of stakeholders from heterogeneous functions or companies with knowledge of the different product lifecycle stages. Knowledge sharing across supply network is, therefore, considered as a key enabler for the successful development of PSS. The existing literature, however, overlooks knowledge sharing network in a PSS context. The purpose of this paper is to explore the possible knowledge-sharing network for PSS development using social network-tie theory—in order to map the relationships, interactions and knowledge to be shared between actors, and eventually discuss the PSS impact on their relationships in the network.

The paper proposes a framework for analysing the performances of product-service systems (PSSs) development processes using a balanced scorecard (BSC) as an instrument to guide the implementation and the evaluation of new methods and tools. Emerging from a case study in the aerospace industry, the paper discusses the main challenges in PSS development and proposes a performance measurement framework for PSS development based on multi-criteria indicators. Finally, the benefits of a framework for PSS development performance measurement are discussed.

Current systems engineering (SE) standards do not address 'Value' in much detail. Yet, understanding what drives the generation of stakeholder value in a given business context, is fundamental to promoting a common and clear vision throughout the extended enterprise, of what should be the focus of their early, conceptual work at all levels of development. This paper presents a Value-Driven Design (VDD) methodology designed to strengthen the value and requirements maturation process within an extended enterprise setting. The work presented is the result of a three and a half year European program (CRESCENDO) within the aerospace sector. The VDD methodology is introduced and explained in an industrial aircraft development context and a selection of enabling methods and tools associated to the VDD methodology is presented