The ability to capitalize on company knowledge and experience earned in various projects is recognized as key assets in the competition on the growing global market. Methods and tools are constantly evolving, still there is a frustration over repeated design flaws and design engineers has a difficult task to find and use manufacturing experience from earlier projects. This paper outlines a process improvement approach where the engineering process is described andanalysed to find bottlenecks. Examples from other engineering processes are presented along with a prototype of a knowledge application to resolve identified issues with the manufacturing feedback process.Experience and knowledge are closely related, hence a knowledge life cycle explain the different stepswith a "capturing" and "deploying" side.The feedback processes for manufacturing experience is analysed where search & find together with contextualisation of experience data are recognised as key mechanisms. A knowledge application is presented that presents experience data from different repositories in a way that is logic for the receiver. This reduces the lead-time and increase the quality of the feedback process.

Life cycle responsibility for manufacturing companies increases the service content coupled to the product. One consequence is that transferring knowledge gained from all life cycle phases has an even more decisive impact on the definition of the product concept, here referred to as the functional product. The paper focuses on transferring experiences from the manufacturing phase and how to account for these in the design phase. Based on an empirical study at two companies, an automotive and one aeronautical company, current practices were identified. Manufacturing experiences are captured and managed in a manufacturing context whereas the use of experience in the design phase is discussed. Finally a generic approach to support the use life cycle experiences in earlier phases of product development is suggested, where the design and manufacturing case serves as an example.

The ability to learn from ongoing and previous projects is important for companies to become, and maintain, competitive. Hence efficient methods and tools for both capturing and reusing experience in all life cycle phases of the product is a key enabler to keep and gain an advantage in product development companies. By definition, PSS combines "features" applicable to different life cycle phases, e.g. reusability when disposed, serviceability in aftermarket, manufacturability in manufacturing, etc. The "total offer" must take into account all aspects and coherently map these into a receiver context to support the design engineer in his work. In particular - the design phase is important since both the products, its realization and accompanying services are to a large extent decided in the early phases. This paper presents an industrial case demonstrating the mapping and contextualization of manufacturing experience to provide engineers relevant context when defining and designing the PSS

A manufacturing company’s unique intellectual capital is to a largeextent built on experience from its own product development andmanufacturing processes. Thus, methods and tools to utilize and benefit fromthis experience in an efficient way have an impact on a company’s ability tostay competitive and advance on the global market. Knowledge BasedEngineering (KBE) is an engineering methodology to capture engineeringknowledge systematically into the design system. Hence, KBE tools areconsidered to support experience re-use and improve engineering activities.This paper presents the results from a study where the objective was toinvestigate the support for experience re-use in KBE applications in anaerospace company. A proposed framework is presented to analyze thecapturing and use of experience in a company’s processes identifying gaps andpropose improvements. The study revealed weaknesses in the process steps forexperience feedback which can be used to improve KBE applications further.

New generations of environmentally friendly and safe vehicles require manufacturing of light weight materials with higher strength and, as a consequence, tougher machining conditions and increased machining robustness. There is a lack of practical and reliable methods and tools to meet these challenges in the automotive industry. The very complex system of machine tool, fixture, cutting tools and the machined part is almost impossible to model without complementary measurements of the real system at the factory floor in full production. Using Virtual Engineering together with studies of machining processes the project team will assess these challenges.

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.

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.

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.

Growing from data collected within a major EU research project in the aerospace domain, the paper proposes a candidate approach to assess the value of Product Service System design alternatives in a preliminary design phase. A framework composed of six main families of value criteria is proposed to support the product/service development team in evaluating the responsiveness and trade-off between alternative designs that target lifecycle commitment, withrespect to the impact on perceived values and stated needs and expectations. A visualization approach is also proposed to quickly communicate the value contribution of the design alternatives at the decision gate.

The aim of the paper is to discuss the rising potential of social software to increase the knowledge management capabilities of virtual product development teams. It presents six fundamental transitions, elaborated from the empirical findings, which justify the rise of a more bottom-up, social creation and sharing of engineering knowledge in the virtual organisation. The study suggests that traditional engineering knowledge management approaches alone are not sufficient to support development activities in the virtual organisation, and that such teams display an increasing demand for social, comparatively lightweight and remixable platforms for bottom-up, social creation and sharing of knowledge.

Currently, mechanical design of aero engine structural components is defined by dimensioning of Design Parameters (DP's) to meet Functional Requirements (FR's). FR's are typically loads, geometrical interfaces and other boundary conditions. Parameters from downstream processes are seldom actually seen as DP's. This paper proposes that downstream process parameters are treated as DP's which calls for engineering methods that can define and evaluate these extended set of DP's.Using the proposed approach manufacturing process alternatives can be used as DP's in early stages of product development. Both the capability to quantitatively assess impact of varying manufacturing DP's, and the availability of these design methods are needed to succeed as an early phase design method. One bottleneck is the preparation time to define and generate these advanced simulation models.This paper presents how these manufacturing process simulations can be made available by automating the weld simulation preparation stages of the engineering work. The approach is based on a modular approach where the methods are defined with knowledge based engineering techniques-operating close to the CAD system.Each method can be reused and used independently of each other and adopted to new geometries. A key advantage is the extended applicability to new products, which comes with a new set of DP's.On a local level the lead time to generate such manufacturing simulation models is reduced with more than 99% allowing manufacturing process alternatives to be used as DP's in early stages of product development.

The objective of this paper is to discuss how Knowledge Enabled Engineering, when combined with simulation methods is a development step for product development processes, engineering design methods and evaluation support systems. The paper opens the discussion on how these approaches, i.e. work methods, simulation support and Knowledge Enabled Engineering (KEE) methods affects best practice in engineering design (ED) by adding synthesis support to the already existing analysis support. In the presented work the authors discuss the actual state of industrial applications, with challenges and opportunities, at Volvo Car Corporation, automotive manufacturer, and Volvo Aero Corporation, jet engine component manufacturer, both operating in Sweden.

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.

In light of emerging product development trends, such as Product-Service Systems, manufacturing organizations are obliged to collaborate across functional and organizational borders. Hence, companies are increasingly investigating how to leverage knowledge management practices to enhance their dynamic learning capabilities to achieve continuous process improvements. Manyresearchers assert that lessons learned practices are possible ways for organizational learning, which allows for continuous capturing and sharing of experiential knowledge across boundaries in order to learn both from mistakes and successes. However, many organizations fall short in capturing and sharing lessons from projects and applying them in new situations. The purpose of this paper is to propose a video-based approach and related guidelines for capturing and sharing lessons learned in a dynamic manner across functional and organizational boundaries. Based on laboratory experiments as well as validation activities conducted in collaboration with an aerospace manufacturer, this papercompares the video-based approach with a more traditional text-based approach of documenting lessons learned from projects. The paper describes the results of testing activities conducted with a video-based lessons learned prototype and the authors reflect on its implications for design practice management in the aerospace industry.

In the design of high temperature components, design evaluation often requires an iterative procedure between thermal fluid and thermal structural simulations An integrated computer system providing an iterative environment for the multidisciplinary simulations re quired has been developed. The system supports iterations between thermal fluid and thermal structural simulations using two different commercial simulation packages. Traditionally, fluid and structural analysis have been simulated separately and analysis of coupled prob lems has required special, multidisciplinary simulation packages which are seldom used in early stages of design. Improving the infrastruc ture for data exchange between separate computer applications is one way to significantly reduce the lead time for design iterations. This reduction in lead-time allows multidisciplinary effects to be accounted for in early stages of design. The design system is demonstrated on an exhaust manifold, where the thermal interaction between fluid and structure is of significant importance. The commercial simulation tools have been integrated to demonstrate the effect of automised data flow on design methodology, i.e , de sign iterations. This integration method makes use of existing features in the simulation packages and uses an export file format as the neu tral exchange format. In this way, the integrated system is simple and fast to develop which is preferred in small prototype systems and de velopment project Database integration supports a tighter integration, but requires more development effort. For design systems, where several design tools need to communicate, standardised information management procedures are preferable, following the ideas of the STEP framework.

Product-Service Systems (PSS) has now for more than a decade been a research interest in Europe and Japan. The research aims to support manufacturing industries’ ability to provide value in terms of a service offer to its customers, simultaneously taking a more holistic approach to eco-sustainability. The idea of providing customer benefits in parallel with robust products is not new, yet equipping engineers to integrate a radical innovation and service perspective in the early design stages is received as fairly radical. Prevailing methods, tools and design thinking are barriers that prevents approaching PSS by the necessary integration of several, but distinct, logics.Due to the inclusion of both product development and service development in development of PSS, at least, two schools of thoughts exist within the research field of PSS development. Namely, one based on product development rationality and one based on service provision reasoning. In general, such a situation would be a base for a conflict where the debate focuses, which strand that should be more valid than the other. However, if so, this would certainly not benefit the need for cross-disciplinarily research of PSS. The purpose in this paper is two-fold; first, to describe PSS research efforts by acknowledging both the product and the service perspective, second to explore and discuss future directions and by that identify “white spots” on the map which may be seen as relevant to bridge the integration gap.

In this thesis a new perspective to Computational Support in Product Development is presented. It is explained and discussed how computational simulation can be used to achieve shorter lead time and better quality in the product development process. The approach proposed is to use a generic and process based sequential decomposition of computational simulation activities in a product development project. This methodology seeks to ensure that the best methods and tools are used in all stages of a project and that critical weaknesses can be identified and improved. Relevant data flow and methods are identified and tested on real cases, in different applications and for different methods to develop and test the methodology. The approach and the results have been tested and also implemented in industrial practices.

A structured method for selection of technology requirements is described which exemplifies a concept for continuos development of organization, coworkers and methods. Using a process oriented view for product planning, needs for improved technologies have been identified at two business centers at Volvo Aero Corporation.Structured analysis is introduced by using a simplified QFD analysisapproach, illustrating the key principles of structured analysis. The objective of the analysis is to obtain overview of technology requirements and then define detailed technology programs. The examples discussed are on methods and technology for gas turbine high temperature components. The technology improvements are then continuously integrated with ongoing product development.

The success of engineering companies is highly dependent on how well product information is managed, engineered and communicated. From marketing through development to after sales activities, data needs to be accessible and used in the best way. Today, geographical distance, the need for close co-operation and data complexity are all natural parts of the working environment. Product modelling techniques are continuously evolving with new requirements and opportunities emerging daily. This paper will outline and discuss some of these trends, and at the same time present some of the areas where research is being carried out within projects in the Product Model Cluster in the national graduate school - The Swedish Engineering Design Research and Education Agenda (ENDREA).

The introduction of new design activities into an established product development process may involve more work in the initial stages of development, yet this extra effort may reduce the need for more expensive and time-consuming redesign activities later in the project. Wehave studied a case where more intensive use of computational simulations in the early design phase means that fewer hardware tests are needed because the designs can be analytically evaluated in advance of physical testing. Total development lead time and cost can thus be significantly reduced. This paper addresses how to evaluate alternative design strategies and methods with respect to their impact on the development process time. This is achieved by analysing the design process using signal flow graphs. The technique has been applied to jet engine component development projects at Volvo Aero Corporation in Sweden. We have found that evaluating alternative processes using signal flow graphs not only is helpful to assess the effect of introduction of new or improved design activities on the development process, but also is a means to facilitate the discussion of process improvement alternatives and trade-offs for an organization.

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

The ongoing transition challenges the way we work since ownership and responsibility for the product we use changes. Increasingly, manufacturers become service providers rather than product providers.So far – the focus on this transition has been on the service dimension itself – and comparatively little has been suggested on how the products themselves are affected when integrating the service and product dimensions.A framework is suggested where the life cycle of a Product/Service System is presented. The framework is represented by five life cycle phases where three actor categories views are represented. The framework is described using examples from different industries/businesses.The intention is that the framework can be used for both B2C and B2B type of relations. One core characteristic is that the “traditional” sales phase is replaced by a sales occasion that occur within different life cycle phases depending on which business context/model is used.

Total Offers, Functional Products, and Integrated Product Service Engineering reflect a shift toward service offers from manufacturing industry captured within the term Product-Service Systems (PSS). Manufacturing companies have traditionally focused design and development activities on realizing technical and engineered aspects of physical artifacts, while PSS include deeper understanding of customers’ expectation, needs and perceived value, hence calling for modelling of additional aspects. The change in early design processes and the effects on virtual modelling of product properties are discussed in this paper through aerospace industry examples to clarify ‘parameters of change’, giving suggestions for a simulation driven design (SDD) approach.

A framework for competence development involving universities and company in tight co-operation is being developed at Volvo Aero. A process oriented view and a concept for learning organisations are key factors for the company’s competence profile and thereby it’s competitiveness.Experience from ongoing co-operation programs is presented. The objective is to transfer scientific knowledge into technical knowledge and at the same time stimulate university education and research. The concept is based on PhD students and professors associated to both organisations and working in multi disciplinary teams. As a result, the level of interaction and communication between the university and the company have been significantly enhanced.Advantages and disadvantages of this tight coupling between university and company are discussed.

In aeronautics industry today, companies collaborate closely in virtual enterprises to develop products and solutions that are more integrated and more complex, and that aims to target larger responsibilities regarding the product life-cycle. On top of this, lead-time and development costs needs to be reduced.The 7 Day Proposal (7DP) is the conceptual name of a framework wherein a customized proposal is produced by a virtual enterprise consortium within seven days from a received request for proposal. This is substantially shorter than what is current practice today and implies that new methods, tools and ways of working are needed. Today, in offer processes, time is lost because of insufficient, or immature, available information and knowledge at gate reviews when decisions are due, causing time consuming iterations. The Gated Maturity Assessment (GMA) concept is intended to help reduce these costly iterations by targeting the ambiguity at these gate reviews in order to reduce the uncertainty in decision base. Other frameworks using maturity include Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) and the Capability Maturity Model (CMM). TRL is an artefact-focused framework developed by NASA to assess space technology maturity. CMM is a process-focused framework for assessing organisations' software development process capability (maturity). The GMA is a concept for assessing the maturity of the knowledge that goes into a gate review (i.e. a decision document). The GMA is intended to support decision makers by assuring confidence in these decision points and thereby reducing the number of iterations, hereby reducing lead-time and increases the quality of the process.This paper reports on the development of the GMA concept from the 7DP use case, and also the development of a support tool intended for use in the 7DP process. Essentially, the 7DP process is a stage-gate process like many corporate product development processes with a number of decision gates. Therefore there is a future wish to move towards an engineering design context with this concept. The work is part of the 70 million € European project VIVACE where GMA is part of a Knowledge Enabled Engineering solution to the 7DP use case.

Product/Service-Systems (PSS) strategies are a part of an overall movement towards a service-based society that is increasingly knowledge and information based. Knowledge sharing for cross-company innovation and development projects has been recognized as troublesome, since disparate knowledge domains must be brought together in a cohesive way to support both creativity and innovations. Stage-Gate process models are widely used in collaborative development projects but they do not suggest how to assess the degree of understanding of the produced information and the results in projects. A successful assessment of knowledge should be used for designing the next development steps in form of work methods and tools. This paper describes an approach for supporting Knowledge Management and Knowledge Sharing in the development of PSS. Finally, a concept for supporting knowledge assessment is proposed, based on designing and visualizing knowledge paths.

Product/Service-Systems (PSS) strategies can be observed as part of an overall movement towards a service-based society that is increasingly knowledge and information based, and where sustainability is in focus. PSS deals are contracted on the characteristic to provide ‘functions per unit’. The ownership of the physical product may remains with the manufacturer or a joint venture, a venture that will operate in a cross-company situation with a multitude of knowledge workers.Knowledge sharing for cross-company innovation projects has been recognised as troublesome, since disparate knowledge domains must be brought together in a cohesive way to support creativity and also innovations. This paper describes an approach to lightweight knowledge sharing for the purpose of supporting cross-functional design. This ‘Engineering 2.0’ approach makes it possible to link, with low overhead effort, customer needs, support issues etc directly to the development teams responsible for developing solutions to the identified issues.

Trends of more team working and cross-functional activities in Integrated Product Development increases the requirements on the computer-aided engineering technology used. Experience of using solid models in a product development project at Volvo Aero is presented. Further, it is described how thermal boundary conditions, calculated using Computational Fluid Dynamics simulations, can be integrated with thermal structural analysis in a commercial Finite Element code. It is argued that incremental technology development using technology based on international standards, e.g., the STEP standard, is a low-risk, highly efficient strategy for improving multi-functional analysis systems.

In a traditional business partnership, the partner companies are under contractual obligation to share data, information, and knowledge through one or several information systems that the leading firm decides. In such a case, the issue of sharing "whatever needs to be shared" is settled in contracts before any action is taken, however, also giving the implications that sharing expertise becomes a heavy and time-consuming activity. In turn, it can be argued that the heavy administration affects the lead time of product development negatively since the necessary input flows are delayed. In addition, the adaptation to certain predefined collaborative information systems is both expensive and resource-consuming (e.g., educating staff to use them). Also, the system might not be adaptable to the existing internal technology structure, causing a "translation" procedure, again taking up resources. Another structure for collaboration is a network or alliance of independent partner companies. One motivation for a network structure is that the partners can join or leave it more easily. A reason for joining and staying is an implicit sense of knowledge sharing (Tomkins 2001) and access to a "win-win" environment. Furthermore, the partners can be linked by information technology, i.e., forming a virtual ­structure rather than a physical one. The technologies provide the channels with additional knowledge. In a best-case scenario, a company would get access to a wide range of useful competences, and in a worst-case scenario the company would be drained of its core competences. Accordingly, at least two considerations for joining a partner network can be considered. First, the resources needed to couple the technologies have to be reasonable, due to the underpinning logic of going in and out of more than one network. Second, the company has to identify its knowledge base and evaluate the prospective gains and losses of sharing its expertise.

Drawing from experiences in automotive and aerospace development, the authors argue that it is time to radically progress our current understanding of how creativity could be introduced in organizations where factors like legal demands and contractual agreements severely restrict ‘outside-the-box' thinking, and where well-known creativity enablers such as trust, shared goals, and shared culture are becoming increasingly difficult to accomplish.

Drawing from experiences in automotive and aerospace development, the authors argue that it is time to radically progress our current understanding of how creativity could be introduced in organizations where factors like legal demands and contractual agreements severely restrict ‘outside-the-box' thinking, and where well-known creativity enablers such as trust, shared goals, and shared culture are becoming increasingly difficult to accomplish.

MERA - Manufacturing Engineering Research Area Digitalt Länkad Processtyrning - Erfarenhetsåterkoppling

Product-Service Systems (PSS) raise interesting opportunities for the manufacturing firm as the function is provided to meet customer needs rather than the physical hardware itself. PSS offerings based on the manufacturer's knowledge about the product and the technology can increase its status as problem-solver and solution-provider, reduce life cycle cost and produce high revenue. However, PSS including, e.g. hardware, services, software and electronics are efficient and competitive only if developed for the specific purpose with features such as easy to maintain, upgradeable, with built-in sensors for collecting in-use and service data, and easy to use. This changes the requirements on the manufacturing firm's development process. Looking back historically, the last century gives an interesting changing landscape of the rationale for the product-development methods used in manufacturing firms. This article, based on the previous research in the product- and service-development fields, and on empirical results from studies at several manufacturing firms, looks into how the engineering work is affected by PSS and how it can be enhanced for PSS, especially in terms of required competencies and other capabilities. It results in recommendations for a new, functional product-development process.

VIVACE is an Aeronautical Collaborative Design Environment with associated Processes, Models and Methods. This environment will help to design an aircraft and its engines as a whole, providing to the aeronautics supply chain in an extended enterprise, virtual products with all requested functionality and components in each phase of the product engineering life cycle

Begreppet product-service systems (PSS), eller funktionella produkter, förutspås ha betydande påverkan för ett framtida hållbart samhälle. Ett PSS-synsätt kommer att förändra hur produkter och tjänster används, men också förändra tillvägagångssättet i utvecklingen, eftersom ansvaret för den fysiska produkten genom hela dess livscykel kvarstår hos företaget eller konsortiet som utvecklar PSS-lösningen. I och med detta kan aktiviteterna med omkonstruktion, återanvändning och återvinning, utföras på ett totalt annorlunda sätt än i dag. I den här situationen blir kapaciteten att ständigt förbättra kundupplevt värde genom nya lösningar en viktig förmåga. Således står utvecklingsteam idag inför två stora utmaningar; dels ska de kunna hantera mer abstrakta kundbehov, dels ska de på ett effektivt sätt ständigt bidra till nya lösningar. Det här projektets mål är att stödja PSS-utvecklingsteamets innovationsprocess genom att föreslå faciliterande metoder och verktyg. Specifikt fokus ligger på följande aspekter för att bidra till utvecklingen av en sammanhängande metodologi för team-baserad innovation:- Identifiering, analys och kommunikation av kundbehov samt modellering av värde- Tvärfunktionella team- Effektiv kunskapsdelning- Modellering och visualisering av lösningar baserat på ett kunskapslivscykel perspektiv Projektet kommer att vara en gemensam prestation av industri- och akademirepresentanter. Det praktiska arbetet kommer att utföras i ett nära samarbete. I stort vägleds projektet av antagandet att – visualisering av affärs- och utvecklingsrelaterad kunskap samt snabba modellerings- och simuleringsmöjligheter i tidiga faser stödjer PSS-teamets förmåga att finna nya lösningar och genomföra hållbar utveckling. Förutom ökad kunskap om strategier och tillvägagångssätt för team-baserad innovation kommer demonstratorer av verktyg och metoder vara ett resultat av projektarbetet.

Nationella Flygtekniska Forskningsprogrammet NFFP Projekt: V4103 Erfarenhetsåterkoppling Generellt är det centralt att kunna utnyttja erfarenhet i en verksamhet för att vara konkurrenskraftig. Att företag väljer en specialisering beror till viss del av att man anser att konkurrenskraften ökar genom att man erbjuder produkter och tjänster inom ett definierat område. En förutsättning är att erfarenhet från verksamheten fångas upp och återanvänds på ett konkurrenskraftigt sätt. Tillämpningssituationen som är aktuell i innevarande projekt rör specifikt problemställningar som uppkommer vid fabrikation av flygmotorkomponenter. Detta ger en tydlig bild av vilka erfarenheter som behöver återkopplas, dels till ”uppströms” aktiviteter (läs Produktutveckling) och dels inför kommande produktion. Syftet med projektet är att utveckla förmåga att utveckla fabricerade motorkomponenter genom att använda metod och systemstöd för att återkoppla erfarenhet från tillverkningsprocessen till utvecklingsprocessen (produkt-, och processdefinition). Experimentell verifiering förväntas säkerställa framtagna metoders tillämpbarhet.

Syfte  Byggföretag inom industriellt trävolymbyggande behöver effektivisera sitt projekteringsarbete för att öka sin konkurrenskraft på byggmarknaden. Idag sker projekteringen ofta ostrukturerat och byggsystemet utvecklas på ett sätt som försvårar återanvändning och kontroll, vilket leder till onödiga produktionskostnader. För att kunna återanvända information från tidigare projekt krävs en strukturerad informationshantering så att informationen blir tillgänglig för alla samtidigt som personberoendet minskas. I detta projekt studeras hur knowledge-based engineering (KBE) och liknande kunskapsintensiva metoder (t ex Case-based reasoning) kan bidra till nya arbetssätt och ny informationsstruktur för trävolymbyggnad som ett alternativ till att införa nya programvaror.