Ebook: Transdisciplinary Engineering: Crossing Boundaries

This book of proceedings contains papers peer reviewed accepted for the 23rd ISPE Inc. International Conference on Transdisciplinary (formerly: Concurrent) Engineering, held at the Federal University of Technology, Parana, Curitiba, Brazil, October 3–7, 2016. This is the fourth issue of the newly introduced series “Advances in Transdisciplinary Engineering” which publishes the proceedings of the TE (formerly: CE) conference series and accompanied events. The TE/CE conference series is organized annually by the International Society of Productivity Enhancement (ISPE, Inc.) and constitutes an important forum for international scientific exchange on concurrent engineering and collaborative enterprises. These international conferences attract a significant number of researchers, industry experts and students, as well as government representatives, who are interested in the recent advances in concurrent engineering research, advancements and applications.

Developed in the 80's, the CE approach is based on the concept that different phases of a product life cycle should be conducted concurrently and initiated as early as possible within the Product Creation Process (PCP), including the implications of this approach within the extended enterprise and networks. The main goal of CE is to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the PCP and to reduce errors in the later phases, as well as to incorporate considerations for the full lifecycle and through-life operations. In the past decades, CE has become the substantive basic methodology in many industries (e.g., automotive, aerospace, machinery, shipbuilding, consumer goods, process industry, environmental engineering) and is also adopted in the development of new services and service support.

The initial basic CE concepts have matured and have become the foundations of many new ideas, methodologies, initiatives, approaches and tools. Generally, the current CE focus concentrates on enterprise collaboration and its many different elements; from integrating people and processes to very specific complete multi/inter/transdisciplinary solutions. Current research on CE is driven again by many factors like increased customer demands, globalization, (international) collaboration and environmental strategies. The successful application of CE in the past opens also the perspective for future applications like overcoming natural catastrophes, sustainable mobility concepts with electrical vehicles, and intensive, integrated, data processing. Due to the increasing importance of transdisciplinarity, the board of ISPE Inc. has decided to rename the conference series in “Transdisciplinary Engineering”.

The TE2016 Organizing Committee has identified 31 thematic areas within CE and launched a Call For Papers accordingly, with resulting submissions submitted from all continents of the world. The conference is entitled: “Transdisciplinary Engineering: Crossing Boundaries”. This title reflects the variety of processes and methods which influences the modern product creation. Finally, the submissions as well as invited talks were collated into 17 streams led by outstanding researchers and practitioners.

The Proceedings contains 108 peer-reviewed papers by authors from 20 countries and one invited keynote paper. These papers range from the theoretical, conceptual to strongly pragmatic addressing industrial best practice. The involvement of more than 14 companies from many industries in the presented papers gives additional importance to this conference.

This book on ‘Transdisciplinary Engineering: Crossing Boundaries’ is directed at three constituencies: researchers, design practitioners, and educators. Researchers will benefit from the latest research results and knowledge of product creation processes and related methodologies. Engineering professionals and practitioners will learn from the current state of the art in concurrent engineering practice, new approaches, methods, tools and their applications. The educators in the CE community gather the latest advances and methodologies for dissemination in engineering curricula, while the community also encourages young educators to bring new ideas into the field.

The proceedings are subdivided into several parts, reflecting the themes addressed in the conference programme:

Part 1 of the Proceedings comprises the keynotes.

Part 2 is entitled Concurrent Engineering and Knowledge Exchange and contains papers on research in Concurrent Engineering and the exchange of knowledge in CE in research and practice.

Part 3 outlines the importance of Design Tools and Methods within CE. It contains several methods for managing product data and supporting the product development process.

Part 4, Engineering for Sustainability, addresses a variety of approaches to support disassembly and recycling and estimating the impact for sustainable manufacturing.

Part 5 contains papers in the theme Systems Engineering with system approaches in various application areas.

Part 6 focuses on Multi-disciplinary Product Management with an emphasis on information and project management.

Part 7 contains contributions on Collaborative Design and Engineering with methodologies for enhancing the product development process, such as design thinking and simulation.

Part 8 illustrates some approaches to Decision Support Systems. This topic is also very important in the context of CE.

Part 9 deals with the Optimization of Engineering Operations and Data Analytics, showing mathematical tools for analyzing a variety of product and design aspects.

Part 10 contains contributions on Digital Manufacturing and Process Simulation with models for supporting, simulating and improving the manufacturing process.

Part 11, Cost Engineering, contains papers on research on estimating and reducing costs in the product development process.

Part 12 addresses the theme Product Lifecycle Management with papers on integrated information systems and reusable models.

Part 13 contains contributions in the area of Service Engineering, emphasizing maintenance and reverse logistics.

Part 14 contains papers on the theme Risk Analysis and Value Engineering, an importing topic in CE.

Part 15, Multi-disciplinary Design Optimization, contains simulation and assessment methods in various application areas.

Part 16 contains papers on the theme Knowledge-based Engineering with an emphasis on modeling.

Part 17, Requirements Engineering, addresses the management and elicitation of product requirements.

Finally, part 18 addresses the theme Supply Chain Collaboration. Papers in this part present different aspects of the supply chain.

We acknowledge the high quality contributions of all authors to this book and the work of the members of the International Program Committee who assisted with the blind peer-review of the original papers submitted and presented at the conference. Readers are sincerely invited to consider all of the contributions made by this year's participants through the presentation of TE2016 papers collated into this book of proceedings. We hope that they will be further inspired in their work for disseminating their ideas for new approaches for sustainable, integrated, product development in a multi-disciplinary environment within the ISPE, Inc. community.

Milton Borsato, General Chair, Federal University of Technology – Parana, Brazil

Nel Wognum, Co-General Chair, ISPE, Inc.

Margherita Peruzzini, Program Chair, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy

Josip Stjepandić, Co-Program Chair, PROSTEP AG, Germany

Wim J.C. Verhagen, Secretary General, TU Delft, The Netherlands

Managing complex projects is always a challenge. During a project's life cycle, technical, cost, schedule and political complexities can arise. These challenges may include design requirement changes, resource shortages, changes in government regulations, problems with subcontractors, delays in other interdependent projects, which require detailed project plans, particular skill sets, flexibility and constant adaptability. More importantly, organizations need methods to to help managers address complex situations. System Dynamics is a method that can be applied to different areas of knowledge, especially when the system is relatively complex and the behavior of key variables is difficult to predict. This paper describes the use of System Dynamics to help project managers conduct the management process and face uncertainties and complexities. Lessons learned from a Brazilian Air Force Project Management Office – PMO are presented to illustrate insights and key lessons for decision makers.

Knowledge exchange, as required in Trans-disciplinary Engineering processes (TE) is not without risk. Many types and sources of risk exist, which depend on the type of interdependency between actors (companies) in TE teams as well as on the strategic nature of the knowledge exchanged. Risks need to be managed, not only with technical means, but also with other types of methods, like contracts. In this paper, different types of interdependencies are described which influence the risks that actors may encounter. Moreover, in managing risks, different trade-offs arise, which complicate the choice of a suitable method. In the paper, an introduction to different types of contractual solutions is presented, which need to be extended in further research.

Rapidly increasing diversification calls for a new industry framework. Traditional framework was linear and sequential. Concurrent Engineering worked very well in these environments to reduce time to market. But to meet widely diversifying requirements, we have to develop another framework to adapt to this situation. Parallel Engineering is proposed. It will enable us to adapt quickly to the changes and we can explore new markets. This framework pivots on emerging technologies in material and in networking. Parts companies will play a central role and by combining these parts, any products can be realized to meet personal preferences and needs of customers.

This paper presents a method to facilitate model-based producibility assessments of product variants in the early phases of platform development. The approach uses set-based concurrent engineering principles to explore and narrow down a design space towards feasible alternatives. A case including tool accessibility and assembly robustness of an aerospace sub-system platform is used to demonstrate the approach. The assessment activities can be prepared in parallel, and support the concurrency needed, across design and manufacturing, to serve improved process efficiency. Ultimately, the approach may reduce late design modifications thanks to increased reuse of manufacturing knowledge, as well as reduce cost thanks to less physical prototyping and testing.

Challenges such as globalization and novel technologies are changes-drivers that require transformation within enterprises and their environments. To handle that, enterprises are progressively collaborating with others and becoming part of a Networked Enterprises (NE). In this collaborative and transdisciplinary context, one of the difficulties faced by companies willing to work together, are the interoperability problems between their systems. In order to avoid these problems and consequently, take corrective actions on time, enterprises need to predict and solve potential problems before they occur. To deal with that, evaluations can be performed to assess interoperability and therefore identify strengths and weaknesses of the considered enterprise systems. Despite, numerous interoperability assessment methods existing in the literature, many of them address only one interoperability aspect. In addition, they can also use different approaches and metrics to perform the interoperability evaluation. Thus, it can be difficult when enterprises have to deal with multiple interoperability aspects within a NE. Hence, the objective of this paper is to propose an analysis of the main relevant evaluation methods regarding interoperability. The proposed analysis is essential and will serve as a first step towards proposing a new approach for assessing enterprise systems interoperability within a NE.

The new product development (NPD) is considered an important business process to determine the competitive advantage of companies. In order to launch products successfully, methods and tools have been applied by companies for improving and supporting the activities performed in that process. However, a comprehensive and integrative classification of new product development methods and tools is not clear. Beyond that, regarding how useful the practitioners consider the methods and tools, the adoption, diffusion and application dimensions of them are still research challenges. To address these issues, the aim of this research is to present a classification of methods and tools, besides to present which of them are really applied and useful in new product development of companies. The novelty of this proposal involves the practical perspective encompassing the practitioner's point of view, which goes beyond the theoretical perspective. Methods and tools identified by means of literature review were classified using a qualitative approach. The classification was validated by practitioners of ten companies specialized in product development. Key findings of the classification proposed are presented based on the following categories: performance objective related, added value, complexity and implementation cost. Finally, the research provides an overview of the usefulness and attractiveness of methods and tools. It can support a valuable guidance for companies in order to improve the use of the most useful ones.

Ideas and opportunities are often seen as the same, but there are differences and shared similarities that imply on the way one can achieve and research about them. Creative solutions by creative people are always welcome and can be somewhat improved by technical training or crowdsourcing. However, the recurrent ability to address or to be driven by the value spark that makes the idea a winner still demands research and tools. A new valuable product idea is a complex entity. This paper presents a brief investigation of theoretical innovation models with a focus on its mechanisms for identifying new product opportunities. The work aims to complement partially the research conducted by Kampa [1], which features an emphasis on approaches presented by classical New Product Development Process (NPD) models. An exploratory study was conducted on generic innovation models and its main stages in order to identify how new product opportunities are treated in them. It was seen that few procedural detailsare offered, and that the topic has been mainly discussed on idea management models. Despite their aim on the idea part of the equation, it is clearly noted that the opportunity identification mechanisms should be investigated within these areas, somewhat segregated as sources on NPD researches, and should involve works on idea management models and open innovation models.

The use of aluminium hulls has advantages such as versatility in achieving complex shapes, lightness, strength, durability and it doesn't present corrosion issues nor embrittlement by temperature. When designing aluminium hulls the designer prioritizes welding as a major joining method. However, the aluminium welding process is complex, therefore the requirements involved in the manufacturing are critical. Furthermore, it is noted that when the design is performed on small and medium-sized vessels, these requirements are not adequately considered early in the design process. This fact is made worse when considering the product life cycle, generating problems such as redesign of the product, increasing manufacturing time and material waste. This paper proposes a design Template to assist obtaining the design specifications of aluminium vessels in the early stages of product development. The Template is based on the product life cycle and takes into account the general and specific attributes in order to generate a list of design rules, recommendations, best practices and solution-solving principles, which were established based on the literature and on professional experience. The outcome of the Template is a set of information which are available throughout the matrix. In order to improve the result, surveys and interviews were conducted with experts in the field. The main advantages of the use of this tool in designing a vessel are: i) to enhance knowledge management since new information (knowledge) can be added in the matrix cells, as the shipyard acquires knowledge; ii) to facilitate the integration of designers with different technical areas of a shipyard; iii) to reduce the design and manufacturing time of the vessel; and iv) to reduce product development costs, since waste is reduced.

Corporate competitiveness requires products and processes increasingly developed. The automotive sector hosts a large number of complex processes and increasingly produce more with fewer resources and less time to perform. The Russian TRIZ methodology enables you to create or develop solutions through the call “Inventive Engineering”. Therefore, this article aims to present a creative solution to fixing armored glass slides through TRIZ technique. The research was carried out in an industry leader of safety glass in Brazil. In the end, it was found that the solution integrated with the mechanical material properties of the product through a creative and innovative solution.

Nowadays companies are pushed to offer solutions with new functionalities, higher performances, lower environmental impact, lower cost, and high usability for final users. In this context, the concept of Product-Service System (PSS) represents a valid way from manufacturing firms to evolve their market proposition, reduce impacts of their processes, and satisfy the customers' needs. However, the design of PSS is still difficult, due to the lack of structured methodologies and evidences of the benefits connected with their adoption. The research adopts a systematic QFD-based methodology and demonstrates its validity to develop high sustainability PSS solutions. The case study focuses on the definition of a new PSS for green roofs: two groups of students, using respectively traditional methods and the proposed QFD-based methodology, were involved. The two PSSs conceived were evaluated in terms of outputs supporting the design phases and sustainability impacts. The case study results demonstrated how the adoption of a systematic method allows developing more business-oriented and more sustainable PSS in respect to traditional methods.

Functional modelling can be challenging to integrate with physical CAD-modelling, since the natures of these representations are quite different. This paper presents a methodology seeking to bridge these representations in a product platform context. The contribution of this work is a pragmatic way to improve the connections between Functional Requirements and CAD models. It does so by structuring functions, features and components and by linking these through tags in CAD-models. The methodology thereby associates the CAD models to the functional knowledge used when creating them. The result is the functional mapping chart, which is illustrated by an example from the automotive industry.

This paper presents a set-based approach to use functional models for platform concept development to identify feasible modules at early design stages. The concepts are defined using functional requirements, design solutions and their interconnections. These models are then encapsulated into functional modules through clustering of Design Structure Matrixes (DSM). A metric is introduced to quantify the ability to modularize a certain concept, which may be used to assess and eliminate inferior concepts. The approach is illustrated using a case study from the aerospace industry. The result shows that modules can be identified by clustering of the functional structure. This has an integral effect on early division of work, possibility to design reuse, etc. The ability to modularize a specific concept The case study also shows that, despite of the traditionally integrated character of the product studied, it is possible to identify functional modules for reuse in a platform.

This article is about the approach to achieve of design decisions modifiability on the level of assembly units. The main feature of this approach is design parameters manipulation as the semantic attributes. This is achieved by the assembly process representation of consistent implementation design procedures. They are treated as basic operations set, united by object orientation with a strictly defined semantic content.

Manufacturing companies nowadays are more than ever compelled to adapt to the challenges of constantly changing conditions in the product creation process. The exchange of digital data and data processing are in the foreground in many processes from initial idea to disassembly and recycling. For this purpose, especially in product development and in downstream processes, versatile data formats are needed which are able to enrich 3D product data with additional information. Subsequently, the 3D PDF is a potentially suitable format to support a variety of applications. It offers not only the ability to visualize 3D data without installing or licensing a CAD system, but also allows the data to be dynamically adjusted, commented and animated in a template container. By means of digital rights management, a know-how protection is provided in the use of 3D PDF, which has a high priority in many industries of the manufacturing sector. In this paper, a concept for the use of 3D PDF is presented regarding a defined workflow for disassembly and recycling within the product creation process. For achieving this, an analysis of existing use cases and associated processes is necessary. After having identified an distinctive field of studies with the help of the model, it is to work out a new use case. Later in the paper a workflow is developed and finally a prototypical example of the 3D PDF document is implemented.

Design for Sustainability (D4S) and LifeCycle Assessment (LCA) methods usually focus on one single aspect of sustainability at a time (e.g., environmental issues, ergonomics or costs) and are usually applied when the industrial system is already created, so that only corrective actions can be taken. In this context, the present research highlights the need of predictive methods to design sustainable system, able to provide an early holistic assessment from the early conceptual stages, and defines a set of models of impact able to assess all aspects of sustainability (i.e., environmental, economic and social) by proper key performance indicators (KPIs) from the early design stages. An industrial case study is presented to show the application of the proposed models on industrial manufacturing systems and demonstrate their validity in estimating the global impact on sustainability, including also human factors.

The increase of waste presents a challenge for organizations and societies pursuing sustainable development. In this context, recycling is widely recognized for being a friendly strategy to the environment and the proper approach to effectively manage waste and minimize the negative impact on the environment and the economy. However, since the available recycling technology requires both raw materials and energy, it ultimately contributes to the depletion of natural resources. Therefore, it is vital to assess the energy efficiency of recycling processes to determine their real benefit. The scientific literature suggests a series of approaches, requirements and practices, which may be, at first sight, confusing. The present study focuses on efficiency evaluation of recycling processes by means of exergetic analyses. It performs a systematic review, based on nine significant factors in recycling processes, of the relevant literature concerning the evaluation of recycling processes through the exergetic approach. The review makes two important contributions. First, it presents an approach for assessing such diverse literature by means of a single structure. In addition, it allows the identification of improvement opportunities and reveals future research opportunities.

Industrial symbiosis is the exchange of by-products, energy and water between industries, centered on a collective approach, and in order to achieve competitive advantages. It is central to the concept of Eco-Industrial Park (EIP) and requires continuous monitoring of the professionals involved. Performance indicators for the measurement and monitoring of industrial symbiosis have been proposed and identified in the literature, however there is no consolidate indicator that is widely used in practice. These indicators require validation in order to evaluate and choose which options are able to measure the industrial symbiosis. There are two types of indicators validation, the conceptual validation and the empirical validation. This study investigates the integration of the conceptual validation and the empirical validation in the evaluation of the industrial symbiosis indicators. It is proposed the combined use of an indicator validation methodology based on expert judgment, the 3S Methodology, and a simulation technique, the Agent-Based Modeling (ABM). The proposed procedure aims to validate any indicator of industrial symbiosis, providing specific criteria to the evaluation.

The corporate sustainability is about incorporating sustainability into corporate strategy, and it will be decisive for the business development. It also emphasizes the search for a balance in the economic, social and environmental perspectives. This strategic adoption changes the management and organizational characteristics, but the question is if the opposite can happen. In this sense tried to relate some characteristics in a sample of companies, with the sustainability strategy. From the data collected was used a multinomial logistic regression analysis. There was the relationship between five companies characteristics (independent variables) with 15 aspects of corporate strategy and sustainability (independent variables). Thus, the conclusion that has sustainability in the strategic agenda has an important influence in the sustainability strategy for these companies and other features can also exercise, even if on a less scale.

Additive manufacturing technologies are still brand new in industrial production. Although It has widely been used in prototypes development, either low or very low scale production are also able to incorporate such technologies nowadays. The application of additive manufacturing in large scale has been presented as a paradigm to be overcome. Nevertheless, the application of these technologies worldwide might affect production systems dynamics in addition to organizations structures. At the same way, applying additive manufacturing technologies in medium and large scale might also create either novel businesses models or improve marketing segments that were underestimated. For that reason, the main goal of this paper is to investigate the metrics applied in additive manufacturing to identify the main advantages and disadvantages of these scenarios in a systematic study which correlate the economic, social and environmental key points which provide current manufacturing companies to identify the suitability of each additive manufacturing technology in accordance with its business goals. Therefore, the sustainable metrics for additive manufacturing processes will prove that it is really a sustainable manufacturing. Moreover, these results were results of others preliminary studies which might open a new discussion topic among manufacturing companies.

A Micro Grid is a part linked to the electric power system that can operate autonomously (islanded) or in parallel connection in accordance with the convenience and needs of both utilities as the final consumer. The Universidade Positivo developed since 2014 one Microgrid project integrating renewable distributed generation such as Micro Hydraulic Power Plant, Photovoltaic Generation Arrangements, Power Generation Wind and Biotechnological processes. This paper presents the details and initial results of the project that already has solar and wind power and should be completed in 2017 with the gradual entry of other sources. It is also being developed a data collection system and monitoring and control in order to provide a detailed and didactic view of the entire system. The Universidade Positivo already applied the islanding of installation through a diesel generating unit that operates at peak times and in emergency interruptions. With the gradual implementation of this Micro Grid project it is already possible to identify the benefits of renewable distributed generation in reducing diesel consumption and the emission of Co2 in the atmosphere. Another important point of this project is the integration of Electrical Engineering, Energy, Mechanical, Computer Science, Civil Engineering and Bio Process where the primary source is variable within the specialty of each engineering and the process output is the electricity, conditioned and controlled.