As one of the differentiation strategies towards the strained global competitive market, the concept of Product-Service System (PSS) is emerging. Product-Service System (PSS) is a concept of service system, which is represented with functional deliveries from a provider to a receiver in which products and/or services are the devices for transmitting the functions. In general, actual PSSs in business are forming a complicated consortium in which various multi-stakeholders are involved. The success of product/service design relies in great measure upon the accurate understanding and satisfying of multi-stakeholder requirements, but none of the available PSS design methodologies touch upon how to incorporate and realize the multi-stakeholder requirements in PSS design. This paper intends to fill in this research gap by proposing a practical method to capture and analyze the dependency of multi-stakeholder requirements to enable the development of valuable PSS design which satisfies these requirements. The rationality of PSS design is measured using Life Cycle Costing (LCC) in order to ensure the realization of multi-stakeholder requirements persist to lay within the company’s capabilities. The proposed method was found effective in a case study application to concretize multi-stakeholder requirements in design embodiment of PSS offering. The complex requirements from multiple stakeholders were structured and reflected in the PSS design structure.

The Product-Service System (PSS) is regarded as an attractive business concept that could enable manufacturing industries to increase their market competitiveness. The range and intention of PSS design are rather different from those of traditional product-oriented design. Therefore, designers and design organizations of the future must possess new capabilities and competencies to create an effective PSS design. In this study, the authors developed an educational business game called ‘Edutainment for Designing Integrated Product-Service Systems (EDIPS)’ to enable users to become accustomed to the principle of PSS and change manufactures mindset. However, due to the complexity of the game system and its rules, it is difficult for inexperienced users to play this game without an expert EDIPS moderator who understands the game system and rules. Thus, the purpose of this empirical study is to disseminate and popularize EDIPS among design communities. In order to achieve this, this paper proposes a set of application tools and a guidebook as facilitation tools for encouraging EDIPS implementation and increasing awareness of the PSS principle among inexperienced users without the need for experts. The application tool automatically deals with a number of simple tasks in a game system. In addition, the guidebook substitutes individual responses to players’ questions while playing the game. The effectiveness of the proposed tool was demonstrated through application in a workshop conducted for inexperienced users of EDIPS.

The Mixed Reality (MR) has become a trend in industrial applications such as inspection and maintenance thanks to the benefit of technological advances in computer vision. Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM) is a key component of the MR system which augments the CAD model of a target object in the live stream. However, the existing SLAM-based systems rely on a manual handling or a marker-based registration between the model coordinate and the global coordinate. In this paper, we present a non-marker based registration method which automatically performs both the target object detection in the live stream and its initial 3D pose estimation. We exploit two Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) to align the CAD model in a global map, and to detect the target object in keyframes of the SLAM system. Since manual preparation of training data is very laborious, we also propose a data argumentation method for the industrial application. The data augmentation method generates a synthesized dataset consisting of pairs of the RGB image and the corresponding camera pose using the object's CAD model. Two CNNs for the object detection in keyframes and the initial pose estimation are trained with the synthesized dataset, respectively. Our result shows that this method can robustly find the target object's initial pose without a dense point cloud or other features detected by hand-crafted descriptors.

It is not easy for architects to consider the effect of the acoustic environment of a plan in the early design phase because it requires great expertise to properly use acoustic simulation software. The importance of a room’s acoustics has increased, so a solution that makes the accessibility of acoustic design work for architects is demanded. We developed a kind of acoustic simulation system that can provide a service for architects using virtual reality technology. In this paper, we described how to implement real-time sound representation with the system, which is connected to the visual data of a virtual reality headset and the acoustic simulation. Although there have been many studies using virtual reality technologies in acoustic simulation that have been conducted for a long time, some limitations have been unresolved, such as cost and portability problems. This study tried to realize flexible rendering using vector base amplitude panning (VBAP) and multi-channel speakers with an auralization method. In this paper, we propose a system that implements spatial sound around one person by using 11 speakers and VBAP, and we made a prototype to verify system function. We applied an acoustic ray tracing algorithm by using the Unity game engine and MAX digital signal processing software to control multiple speakers at the same time for VBAP. The hardware part of this system consists of an audio interface, two digital to analog converters (DAC), 11 mono amplifiers, and 11 full-range loudspeakers. The three-dimensional layout of the loudspeakers was based on an icosahedron to maximize the performance of VBAP. We tested the prototype of the system to verify its effectiveness and confirmed the change of sound pressure level according to the distance from the sound source and the sound absorption coefficient of the wall. In a reliability test of the performance of sound image localization by human cognitive ability, the result was a match rate of 89.4%, which proved the usefulness of this system for sound simulation for architects with low cost and easy portability.

Manufacturing companies often define various guidelines on the part placement in a mechanical product. In this study, we present a software system to assist in the layout of parts when minimum thickness and clearance conditions between the parts are specified in the guidelines. The idea of a “bounded distance field” is proposed, which is a distance field in a limited region around the boundary surface of a solid object. Gaps generated during parts placement that are too narrow can be detected by checking the distance value at the surface polygon of the object in the field. Based on a placement of new objects or a position change of objects, the distance field in the modeling space must be updated. To reduce the update cost, we introduce the idea of a “lazy evaluation” into the distance computation. In this method, a thickness and clearance evaluation is performed by using individual fields associated with the objects, and the computation of the combined distance field of all objects is postponed for as long as possible. To evaluate the practical application of the bounded distance field and the lazy evaluation of the distance value, an interactive system to assist in the layout design of water circuits in a mold cavity is demonstrated.

In the field of visual tracking, the methods of Discriminative Correlation Filters (DCF) have showed excellent performance, which rely heavily on the choice of feature descriptors. The Continuous Convolution Operator Tracker (C-COT) is a novel correlation filter to track the target position in the continuous domain, which achieved significant effects. However, as for various visual scenes, different feature descriptors are suitable to different environments. If each feature channel is given the same confidence during the tracking phase, it would limit the performance of some good features. To address this problem, this paper proposes an improved C-COT algorithm that can adaptively perform feature channel weighting. The Average Peak Correlation Energy (APCE) is used to evaluate the corresponding response map of each feature channel, guiding the target appearance model to give different weights to different features. Then, we can obtain the final weighted feature response map whose peak value is applied to locate the target. In addition, the C-COT updates the appearance model rigorously in every frame, which may lead to over-fitting and increase computional complexity. Therefore, in order to reduce the redundancy of the online training sample and avoid similar background interference, we adopts the method of Peak Side Lobe Ratio (PSLR) to update the model. We perform comprehensive experiments on OTB50 and OTB100. The results show that the improved tracker achieves better accuracy, especially in some specific video scenes. In addition, speed has also improved.

The agricultural sector is required to produce a steady, year-round supply of crops to maintain the quality of life of consumers. The organization of agricultural production has, therefore, become increasingly important. This study aims to evaluate the agricultural production systems for storage shortages and quality loss while considering seasonal changes in crop growth. We first discuss the occurrence of storage shortages and quality loss. Next, we investigate the production and crop growth processes in fields used by an agricultural production corporation. We examined the statistical treatment of growth and the relationship between crop growth and the field environment using the data collected from field sensors. We then analyzed the data obtained in the observation. Based on the results of the analysis, we proposed a model for the work process in the field, which is a prediction algorithm for crop growth that considers seasonal changes. We then implemented the simulation model. We verified the accuracy of the proposed growth prediction algorithm through a case study and used the simulation to evaluate storage shortages and quality loss.

In recent years, reducing standby electric power consumption by individual production facilities has been studied to reduce their energy consumption, particularly regarding machine tools, industrial robots, etc., which are principal types of facilities in production systems. Energy-saving idle state capable production facilities (energy-saving idle facilities) have been developed and have begun to be commercialized. They can be in the normal idle state, permitting the quick startup of production from their idle state to reduce energy. Specifically, auxiliary machines unused during idling are shut down, thus minimizing electric power consumption. Such an idle state is defined as the energy-saving idle state (eco-idle state). The research and development of energy-saving idle facilities is advancing, but a lack of effective methods to operate production lines after energy-saving idle facilities have been introduced on these lines is hindering their introduction. Past research has proposed methods for operating energy-saving idle facilities on production lines. However, breakdowns occurring in production facilities have not been considered. This paper proposes a method for operating energy-saving idle facilities on production lines considering breakdowns. The method consists of an idle-time prediction algorithm and an idle-state selection algorithm. Case studies are presented to confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method.