Theory And Method Of Engineering Design For Customer Collaboration

This research is part of engineering design methodology, bringing forward a set of users-oriented design theory and methodology, accessible to general engineering and technical personnel, and investigating how the users comprehend design process, master design methodology and participate in design process, respectively as users, resource providers and designers.This paper proposed a conception of engineering design methodology, dominated by general engineering personnel and oriented by comprehending users and users’ participation. On this basis, a set of original design methodology was established and its feasibility and validity were exemplified by the participation of numerous personnel without engineering design experience. Above all, this paper reviewed on the research on theory and methodology about product innovation and engineering design and tendency in the field of academia and business. Many well-known enterprises had transformed into innovative new model of democratization, open and innovative and users’collaborative innovation. In the area of management, many research had laid a foundation, and general design theory and methodology scholars had also launched many theoretical and empirical studies on a new design form like users’participation collaborative design, additionally the scholars in engineering design field utilized quantitative economics and other means to combine with engineering method, and integrate users’demands, preferences and utility into the research on engineering design, and then drew forth basic definitions and connotation of users’collaborative design, and finally introduced the basic content and structure of this paper.The context was organized on the basis of general engineering design process, and unfolded from users’demands acquisition and analysis; then analyzed the functions of some fixed products to be developed and raised a design conception in accordance with function requirements, moreover to introduce a general design methodology generated and created aimed at complex schemes, finally to propose how to access a special market-oriented program configuration, manage and supervise the overall cost and product design resource organization based on information system by collaborating with users, for the sake of systematic integration and optimization. Some specific research work was as follows:(1) The engineering design initiated from demands, oriented by users, three methods to acquire and analyze effectively the demands were put forward. The traditional qualitative and quantitative analytical methods on demands were equally effective to design process participated by users. In addition, this paper highlighted situational analytical methods based on product use process, which is to conduct sensitivity analysis of elements related to products from the following four aspects:users, environments, tasks and products, on this account to definite priority of product demands and development strategy of products.(2) The function determined the possibility of program structure, in addition of affecting products’values and possibility of users’accessibility. On this basis, the functional analytical methods in three different situations were raised:for simple-structured products, the feature of products and possible structural form could be acquired directly through situational analysis; for other complex products, the structural form of products could be acquired in means of function-state-action-structure via progressively mapping analysis; however, to some products, relatively mature and competitive in market, the relationship between structural feature parameters and users’ option could be acquired by the means of utility analysis in quantitative economics field, through quantitative analysis.(3) From the perspective of users, the scheme was the realizations of best experience process, the method of behavior story flow could conduct an analysis of the completed experience process of products to ensure the logical rationality during the use process, in addition of better understanding and comparing the existing programs and the programs to be developed. Through the analysis of product’s state and kinematics characteristics, a feasible institutional form could be obtained, and then a specific program in accordance with work requirements could be acquired through the constraints of practical working conditions and structural optimization. The matter element, affair element and relation element in extenics was equivalent to the general understanding of the parts of mechanical products, operation form and assembly relationship, more creative form of design programs could be proposed for the sake of product assembly.(4) By the collaborative optimization among users region, design region and system region, a reasonable parameter level and programs satisfying with market demands could be determined from the perspective of system; the design organizers could conduct an overall control and assembly of the development costs of products by the means of cost analysis and optimization decisions. Against the more complicated condition of related resources organization to products development as users were involved in products design process, we proposed to realize this optimization of resources in the autonomic computing environment, besides the value of the resource itself, we pondered the resources values at mutual conversion, in order to reduce costs of products development.Most methodology introductions were followed by corresponding cases, including self-expandable packer, actuators instead of escape hammer, new type of toilet, multifunctional furniture, electric bicycle and robots, what worth mentioning was that the roles of users in these cases were mainly served by freshmen and sophomores with no relative professional education of engineering courses or base of design methodology, or even high school students, they conducted exercise and practice according to the method raised by the author, and most cases had acquired or applied for national patent; meanwhile, some cases originated directly from enterprises’first-line demands. In the process of collaboration, the designers of enterprises started to realize the great significance in methodology design process, and organized staff to launch relative training about the methodology proposed in this paper, all of which well proved the validity of the theories raised in this paper, the practicality of methodology and creativity of the results, thence this research was of great theoretical and practical significance.