In this report, the mechanical design efficiency improvement by digital engineering is described. Basically, the process reform that consists of a front loading, a concurrent engineering, and an arrangement of task and authority is practiced. The organic coupling with information related to the use of not the conversion of a simple tool but three dimension CAD data, three dimension CAD data, and the product development is needed. In the indent product, it is valued to apply the measure to the product. In the consumer product, it is valued to apply the measure to the process.

View full abstract

3D Objects in computer graphics are often represented by triangular meshes. Even surfaces are represented by piecewise planar meshes, we are often required to evaluate differential geometry properties such as normal vectors, principal curvatures, principal directions, locations of umbilics of the underlying smooth surface. However, there is no standard method for estimating differential geometry properties of the unknown smooth surface from polygonal meshes. In this paper, we introduce a new method to calculate principal curvatures and theirs directions. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our method by comparing with other conventional methods.

View full abstract

We introduce a new method to approximate a point cloud by B-spline surfaces by the accelerated geometric algorithm. We distinguish two types of fitting, interpolation and approximation. In this paper we present a method to approximate B-spline surfaces that pass near point clouds. Our method takes an approach that the initial shape is updated step by step by moving the control points to approximate point clouds. I relies on a surprisingly simple geometric algorithm which iteratively updates the input control points mesh in a global manner based on a local point-surface distance computation and an offsetting procedure without solving a linear system. We demonstrate the advantages and disadvantages of our proposed methods with some complex examples.

View full abstract

It is a well-known fact that punctual flights of airlines result in high customer satisfaction. However, the flights are frequently delayed or canceled due to unexpected incidents. These incidents are to be dealt by rescheduling, which intends to maintain a high level of customer satisfaction while adjusting resources involved. Rescheduling is a highly complex problem, because of large number of resources involved and existence of some candidates of possible plan. Today, the flights are rescheduled by operator's implicit knowledge which is cultivated from his/her long experience. For these reasons, a computational support method of rescheduling of flight service is strongly desired to support the difficult rescheduling decisions. This paper proposes a decision support method of flight rescheduling. In order to visualize an analyze the system of flight service, this paper represents flight services as a service model consists of three sub service models: (1) transportation service, (2) operation service, and (3) maintenance service. This paper also proposes an algorithm of the rescheduling based on the flight service model, and evaluation method of flight plans to support operator's decision making. Proposed service model and evaluation method is applied to actual data of flight services as a case study. The result shows practical effectiveness of propositions.

View full abstract

It is necessary to consider both of the benefits and costs brought by a service in order to realize the high-value added service. However, the costs and benefits which customers in groups receive vary from customer to customer. This research aims to suggest a design method for high-value added service in consideration of the benefits and costs for each customer in groups. Especially, this paper proposes a method to represent the vector of the improvement of satisfaction and momentary costs for customers in a service. And this vector supports designer to make a decision about choosing improvement plans.

View full abstract

In Service Engineering, a basic structure of a service that satisfies customer requirements is designed through phases of "development of functional structures" and "embodiment of functions." In the phase of embodiment, it is important, for the purpose of enhancing the quality of a design solution, to acquire a lot of knowledge in other cases. In Service Engineering, service functions are represented by "verb-noun approach" which may leads a different expression of the same functions, and this makes exploring entities that realize a function difficult. In this paper, to classify service functions with a unified representation, the "input-output approach" of functional modeling is introduced. The result of the verification shows that the proposed method is useful to unify service function representation and effective to manage service design knowledge in the embodiment phase.

View full abstract

In Service Engineering, as service is represented with its functions and entities that are needed to realize the functions. When designing services, service designers have to consider mainly two types of entities, human and physical products. Humans and products have their own features as function carriers. Therefore, it is necessary for service designers to design appropriate entities for each function of a service. However, to determine appropriate entities is difficult for novice designers without any supports. In this paper, we develop a matrix that helps service designers determine appropriate entities from the view point of differences in features between human and products.

View full abstract

In service design, it is important to use the knowledge of various areas effectively. Authors have proposed a method to acquire the design knowledge from Web which includes a large amount of information, and a method to use it for service design. It is confirmed that providing a large amount of knowledge is useful for service design, however, on the other hand, a large amount of knowledge place a burden on designers. In this paper, for the purpose of constructing a data base for service design, a method to manage service design knowledge by tagging the knowledge using service quality elements is proposed. And the effectiveness of the tag is analyzed by a comparative verification.

View full abstract

In manufacturing, systems that offer products in combination with services have attracted considerable attention. According to this background, the authors of this paper have conducted conceptual research on design services from the viewpoint of engineering. This series of research is called 'Service Engineering.' Services consist of various entities ranging from physical products to nonphysical products, such as employees and organization. This paper proposes a design method that allows designers to determine service modules consisting of several entities. Concretely, two analysis methods are proposed to analyze service architecture in consideration of dependencies between service elements.

View full abstract