This paper presents a method for computing topological type of voxel models. Our method counts a number of foreground and background components in 124 neighbor voxels of each voxel and topological type is determined by their configurations. This enables us robust estimation of topological elements. In addition, we also apply morphology-like operations on voxels in order to fill mis-judged voxels. This topological classification is efficient for polygonization of non-manifold objects from voxel models. Indeed, we demonstrate a polygonization of thin-plate objects by using classification results.

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Recently, an educational technique called Finland Method is paid to attention. It is said that the Finland Method can improve conception power, logical power, power of expression, a critical thinking, and the reading comprehension. The first stage is a conception method that uses cards which is named Karuta. First of all, the Karuta that become theme is written at the center of space. The conception power can be improved by repeating the conception from the Karuta. This technique is what the individual does on space, and has two problems. First, there is a scene that cannot develop the conception because of space, there is a limit in the resource. Second, the fields and directionalities of conception are biased with the person's back ground when doing alone. In this research, we are focusing on that Finland Method is individual work. Multiple people use the Finland Method respectively on the computer, the developed conception presents it as knowledge where they are shared among participants - Shared Knowledge. It was thought that Shared Knowledge became a trigger, and there was a possibility of hitting on the conception by new directionality. In this paper, we have proposed the conception of training support system using Shared Knowledge. To confirm the effectiveness of proposal system, the evaluation experiment of training is performed by using Finland Method and the proposal system. As a result of the experiment, it was shown that Shared Knowledge became support of a new conception, and that there is a possibility of improving individual conception power by repeatedly using the proposal system.

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In recent years, conceptual design support has been greatly increasing its importance. One major issue of this conceptual design support is assistance of function structure generation. This process is carried out depending strongly on designer's implicit knowledge which is hard to be visualized. Therefore, methodology for support of this process is difficult to be developed. However, proper function structure backed indirectly by such implicit knowledge might be generated by utilizing common features among previous products which are also based on the knowledge. From this point of view, this paper proposes a generation method of proper function structures using similarity evaluation among function decomposition trees of previous products and taking advantage of sub-functions and their structures which are adopted frequently in them.

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In cooperative design activities by a design team, designer needs not only design object information but also design rationale. In order to improve CAD to become means of more widely used information transmission, integrated methods for description and management of design information and rationale are proposed. Two approaches are introduced to construct the management method. First approach is the method oriented to transmit design rationale as a reaction which is taken by CAD system according to design condition. Second approach is the method based on the thought that design rationale can be obtained from designer's action during design process, and the method of estimating design rationale from design cases and the traces of using design cases is proposed. This paper focused on property/attribute relation among parts in design object, and proposed transmission and derivation method of these relations. The last part of this paper, the outline of integrated system which recommends design alternative considering property/attribute relation and design rationale underlying the relation is discussed.

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Laminated glass plates were used for the crime prevention glass of a house and the windshield of a vehicle. In this study, the fracture mechanism of the crime prevention glass was made clear by the impact fracture experiments and commercial distinct element method (DEM) software (PFC3D). The laminated glass plate which was superior in the impact and penetration resistance was examined. From the results of the fracture experiments and simulations, the reflection time of the striker was shorted so that the tensile strength of the interlayer constructed poly vinyl butyral (PVB) is higher. After the fracture, it was understood that a lot of cracks of the glass were occurred to the circumference direction and the fragment of the glass became small.

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In this paper, a sequential approximate multi-objective optimization procedure by the Radial Basis Function (RBF) network with the Satisficing Trade-Off Method (STOM) is proposed. The sampling strategy is an important issue in the sequential approximate optimization. In this paper, the density function and the pareto fitness function are proposed. The objective of the density function is to find the sparse region in the design variable space. New samplings point are obtained by optimizing the density function. The objective of the pareto fitness function is to find the approximate set of pareto optimal solutions from the given data. New sampling point is obtained by optimizing the pareto fitness function. Both functions are constructed by the RBF network. By using both functions, the approximate set of pareto optimal solutions can be found effectively even when the set of pareto optimal solutions are separeted. Through simple numerical examples, the validity of proposed sampling strategy is examined.

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This paper proposes a new method which is called as Adaptive Range Differential Evolution (ARDE), based on Adaptive Range Particle Swarm Optimization (ARPSO). In this technique an active search domain range is determined by utilizing the mean and standard deviation of each design variable. In the initial search stage, the search domain is explored widely. Then the search domain is shrunk so that it is restricted to a small domain while the search continues. To achieve these search processes, the expanded domain is proposed. The search domain is constructed by utilizing the mean, standard deviation and the best position in all particles. Through these processes, it is possible to shrink the active search domain range. Moreover, by using the proposed method, an optimum solution is attained with high accuracy and a small number of function evaluations. Through numerical examples, the effectiveness and validity of ARDE are examined.

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In order to meet the current requirement of lightweight, energy conservation in car development, high strength steel (HSS) is widely applied. But too much springback and poor dimensional accuracy are fatal problems in the application of HSS, so precise predication of springback and an effective control method become urgent in the sheet metal forming area. In the previous study, we know that we can use Variable Blank Holder Force (VBHF) to decrease the springback. Therefore the VBHF approach is popular approach in industries, and it's important to design the VBHF trajectory. However, the information about how to optimize the VBHF Trajectory in previous study is limited. In this paper, we tried to develop an effective way to obtain the VBHF trajectory by using sequential approximate optimization (SAO) approach. The objective is taken as the minimization of springback. The constraints are quantitatively defined with the Forming Limit Diagram (FLD), in which no wrinkling and tearing can be observed. The design variables are the blank holder force. The Radial Basis Function (RBF) network is employed for the response surface, and the validity of the VBHF we obtained is examined through the numerical simulation.

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When a designer finds or encounters a problem during a product design and development process, an effective way of ensuring the security and safety of the product is to identify all the possible causes of the problem by FTA and fix them. Although FTA is an effective method, it is not easy for a designer to construct a complete fault tree without any misunderstanding or oversight. A promising approach for supporting FTA is to utilize a computerized knowledge management method. Although many knowledge management techniques for literal expression have been developed, they are not necessarily suitable for managing the engineering design knowledge of physical phenomena. To solve this problem, the authors propose a new design knowledge management approach called quantity dimension indexing and computerized support for FTA such as the verification of consistency of a fault tree.

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This paper describes a case study of software development of computer-aided fault tree analysis system for reliability design in manufacturing industry. This software development aims at realizing a practical product for the corporate business based on academic research products. But, this kind of software development usually faces two problems, development cost and usability of the software. We overcame those problems by introducing a software development methodology based on our software development platform "MZ Platform" and utilizing the iteration process of prototyping and reviewing in a short period.

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In this paper, the authors propose computerized support system (FTAid) for fault tree analysis (FTA) that is developed by the collaborative research group (Jatco Ltd, The University of Tokyo and AIST). FTA is a method of analyzing and visualizing the causes of a fault event by Fault Tree diagram (FT diagram) in problem resolution of product and design processes. However FTA has a problem that is so many working hours to make a FT diagram without any misunderstandings and oversight. The system (FTAid) is developed based on the knowledge management of quantity dimension indexing that was proposed by Prof. Murakami, and the block diagram. We report the efficiency and effectiveness of FTAid system based on evaluating results (verification and validation) in actual development process, and describe the possible feasibility and future study for proposal methods in complex system development.

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While increasingly intense global competition is becoming seriously, the management of product quality, the improvement of productivity and the cost reduction are very important issues for a company. In the iron and steel industry, they demand to realize steady operation in the continuous casting process, which is one of important process of the steel manufacturing. The decision making to choose proper operation is important by understanding a current state of the steel and the equipment in the continuous casting process and predicting the condition in the future. However, the knowledge that is necessary for this decision-making is implicit knowledge of the skillful operating worker. Such operating knowledge will disappear along with the retirement of the skillful operating worker. Problems such as increase in the disaster by the dangerous behavior and decline in the productivity have been becoming serious. A skillful operating worker has a cognitive model (a continuous casting process model) of the casting process in the inside of the head. This research tried to define and describe their cognitive model with Petri-Net, and develops an operating decision making support system for the trouble avoidance using a reachable tree in this research. Using this system, we input the steel and equipment conditions of the accident occurrence that was reported in the accident and trouble report, and predict a trouble occurrence, and extract the operation to avoid a trouble.

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The system LSI has been improved its values by increasing its circuit scaling and technology scaling based on Moore's law. However, semiconductor devices are expected to face physical and economical miniaturization limits in the near future, and traditional technology scaling based on the Moore's law is going to fail. Therefore, 3D technology, like 3D-SiP (System-in-Package), has been realized rapidly as a key to break through these limits. However, by increasing circuit scaling and evaluation point such as heat caused by shift to 3D structure, design quality is reduced, because it becomes difficult to define and visualize whole system. In this paper, using SysML (System Modeling Language), which is generally used for defining systems, we visualize whole system and optimize 3D-SiP system.

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Robots are expected to join in not only a great success in the industrial field but a public and a home places. However, in order to accept robots socially, when our life spaces are shared with them, it is essential that a safety is fully obtainable. In this paper, for the development of a safety biped robot, new design concept is created by applying the contradiction solving method. Moreover, demands of a safety for this robot are solved not as "Problem Solving by Trade-Off", but as "Contradiction Solving". Therefore, we suggested new solution for contradict problems by using creative thinking process.

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In the system architecting, or conceptual design, of mechatronic systems such as high-end printers and medical instruments, system architects define a hierarchical structure of subsystems and their interfaces in terms of parameter relations independently from specific physical domains. Such a hierarchical structure is necessary to understand the overall functions of systems and clarify the design objectives and tasks to be refined in the detailed design stage. Our research focuses on computer-aided design of multi-domain physical systems in conceptual design. Within the research framework, this report proposes a method to compose structural hierarchy of mechatronics systems along with functional system decomposition. The method has been implemented a CAD system for system architecting and demonstrated with a system architecting case of an air conditioner. The method helps systematically generate possible structural hierarchies of systems based on various computational supports with the knowledge base of physical phenomena and a heuristic algorithm.

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There are design problems of a complex product at system requirements analysis phase on V-shape process, which it is difficult to transfer system requirements from product requirements. The cause of this problem originates in unestablished design process to decompose of requirements and behaviors of a product. In this paper we discuss three processes of the stepwise design process which consist of decomposition of requirements and behaviors using problem frame, selection of functional structures from feature model which satisfy these requirements and behaviors, and refinement of model using state transition analysis. The effects of the process is shown corresponding to those problems.

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In recent years, highly functional product development complexity, which led to various requests received from various stakeholders. As a result, designers need to resolve more requests than ever before. There are some ambiguous requests included. Such a vague request originally been clarified by the designers and the stakeholders but they are not treated correctly. Because It is difficult to apply analytical methods to clarify such requests. In this paper the authors propose the procedure to analyze and how to represent this ambiguous requests using requirement model.

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This paper introduces a model-driven product development for complexity management. Today, the complexity of the mechatronics products e.g. automobile, electric product, and airplane, makes it more difficult that the engineers collaborate each other. The causes of the complexity can be categorized into three: (1) the requirement for complex function is increasing, (2) the scope of the design is getting more widely, and (3) the combination of the line-up product is becoming huge number because of the widely-covered product family. In order to manage and control such complexity of product and product development, this paper introduces a model-driven approach based on a product model. The product model describes three dimensions: (1) the structure of the product, (2) the function requested by the customer, and (3) the product behavior of the software. The detailed structure, elements and representation ability of the system model of the product structure, function and behavior is introduced. The model structure is represented as a hierarchical network model of product component, connections, attributes, and constraints. The model of function is represented as a network of signal/material/energy flow and its translation capability. The model of behavior is represented as a network of component state and its transitions.

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This research addresses an integrated structure design method which integrates numerical analysis using finite element method and exact analysis method based on simple modeling of topological elements such as a beam, truss, and so on. The integrated design method contains three steps: (1) design of initial product structure, technical specification, and general arrangements, and (2) early optimization by finite element method, and (3) detailed optimization by exact analysis method. The first step consists of designing spatial slot and reinforcing area. The second step consists of mesh generation, calculation of stifeness matrix, and analysis of stress and strain. The third step consists of derivation of load for element, reference to design patterns, and calculation of detailed stress and strain. Through three steps, the detailed optimize structure is obtained.

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Recently there is a growing need for micro water cooling systems with the development of small-sized fuel cells for mobile electric devices. In general, a water cooling system requires a valve for controlling flow rate of coolant in order to keep targeted devices at appropriate working temperature. Traditional type of a flow control valve is driven by an external power source and a control system. However, for the realization of small-sized fuel cells, it is preferable that whole water cooling system is sufficiently small and can be driven by very little or no electricity. Therefore, in this paper, we focus on a thermal actuated compliant mechanism as the successor to the traditional type of a flow control valve and develop an optimal design method of a thermal actuated compliant valve based on our two-stage design method that consists of topology and shape optimization. In the 1st stage, topology optimization creates an initial outline of a thermal actuated compliant valve. To allow for design of thermal actuator, we adopt level set based topology optimization and formulate the thermal actuator design problem as a topology optimization problem. In the 2nd stage, shape optimization then yields detailed shape of a thermal actuated compliant valve by considering various design requirements of a flow control valve such as ratio of valve opening due to temperature change and stress constraints.

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Recently, many level set-based topology optimization methods have been proposed. Among them, our previously proposed level set-based topology optimization method has an advantage of eliminating grayscale elements because of incorporating the arbitrary Lagrangian Eulerian method. In this paper, we apply the previously proposed method to a compliant mechanism design problem. Since grayscale elements are completely eliminated, there is no ambiguity of the optimized structure in the engineering sense. This characteristic is very important in compliant mechanism design because compliant mechanisms usually have thin hinge parts. We demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed method using a numerical example.

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In our previous research, we focused on vehicle suspension systems as promising application targets of a compliant mechanism and proposed a design method for a suspension using compliant mechanism. The design method is evaluated only static characteristics. However, in order to design more practical suspension, a dynamic function should be taken into consideration in the design method. This is why the main functions of a vehicle suspension are improving ride quality and running stability by absorbing vibration from road surface while running. Therefore, in this paper, we focus on static and dynamic characteristics of a compliant suspension and study on a structural optimization method considering them. The natural frequency of the sprung mass and unsprung mass is considered as the dynamic characteristics. Then, to raise the natural frequency, we consider the eigen frequency of a compliant suspension is raised.

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This paper describes a multi-objective free-form optimization method for designing shell structures under multiple loading conditions. Compliances for multiple loadings are used as the objective functionals. This vector objective functional is scalarized by the weighted method and minimized under a volume and the state equations constraints. This problem is formulated as the parameter-free shape optimization problem under the assumptions that the shell is varied in the normal direction to the surface and the thickness is constant, and the shape gradient function is theoretically derived. The free-form optimization method which was proposed by the author is used to determine the natural free-form shell, while minimizing the objective functional. The calculated result shows the effectiveness of the proposed solution for designing multi-objective free-form shell structures under multiple loading conditions.

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A multi-objective particle swarm optimization (MOPSO) is known as a multipoint-search-based meta-heuristic approach to find diverse Pareto solutions efficiently, but has difficulty to handle the constraint conditions. Overcoming the disadvantage, this study proposes a hybrid algorithm incorporating MOPSO and sensitivity analysis on constrained conditions. When the design candidate is violated, the design candidate is moved to feasible domain based on the gradient information of the constraint conditions. The transerring algorithm is adopted for each design candidate at each iteration in MOPSO algorithms. Through several numerical examples, the diversity and convergency of the Pareto solutions and the performance of the proposed method are investigated.

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This study proposes a reliability-based multiobjective optimization (RBMO) algorithm incorporated with hybrid multiobjective particle swarm optimization (MOPSO) handles the constraint satisfaction technique based on gradient information of constraint conditions and the single loop reliability-based optimization techniques, single-loop-single-vector method (SLSV). The authors have been proposed a hybrid MOPSO for handling the constrained multiobjective optimization. In the algorithm, the violated particle will move to feasible region using gradients of the constraint conditions. In this study, the hybrid MOPSO is extended to the reliability-based multiobjective optimization that the reliability is usually evaluated by using the gradient information of the limit state function such as the first order reliability method (FORM). However, the FORM-based optimization approach was formulated as double-loop iteration method. Therefore, SLSV method formulated as a single-loop method by using a proper approximation of the reliability constraint is adopted for computational efficiency. Through numerical examples, the effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated.

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Organic light emitting diode (OLED) is used for lighting utilized as display of television, mobile phone, digital camera, and so on. Luminescence spectrum and radiant energy of light from OLED structure depends on film thickness and optical indexes of the thin film materials. The structural optimization of thin films is useful to satisfy the design specifications on luminescent color and energy efficiency. We developed the system using genetic algorithms which could simultaneously optimize film thickness and optical indexes of each layer. In this report, results of the optimization of OLED structure to increase the radiant energy with target spectrum are shown.

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Locally resonant phononic crystals are new type of sound insulating material, which consist of three different materials. This paper presents a design method of the locally resonant phononic crystals using the level set-based topology optimization method. First, basic details of the level set-based topology optimization method are briefly discussed. Next, concept of the resonant phononic crystals is briefly discussed and fourmulation of the desgin method is proposed.

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This paper proposes a level set-based topology optimization method for the design of negative permeability dielectric metamaterials. Electromagnetic metamaterials are artificial materials with extraordinary physical properties such as a materials with negative refractive index, that is, negative permittivity and permeability. Because the presence of grayscale areas in the optimal configurations affects the performance of metamaterials, a topology optimization method in which a black-and white optimal configurations are obtained is desirable. In this paper, first, the level set-based topology optimization method for the design of dielectric metamaterials is explained. The optimization problem for minimizing the effective permeability dielectric metamaterials and the optimization problem for finding the optimal layout which shows the prescribed effective permeability are then formulated. Finally, several numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the utility and validity of the proposed method.

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IC chips are used in almost all modern electronic devices, such as computers and cell phones, and are essential for our lives. But the IC chip temperature rises steeply caused by the downsizing of IC chips and high density of circuits. So countermeasures against heating up are one of the important issues for the IC chips because the increased IC chip temperature causes malfunction. However, the traditional countermeasures such as the cooling fan and the heat sink of regular pattern have a limitation in their cooling performance. So we have focused on the cooling channel with superior cooling performance. In this report, a design method of cooling pathway by utilizing the optimality of branching system has been suggested because it is said that branching system in nature is optimum structures for many purposes. And the cooling performances of the proposed design method have been evaluated from both methods of CAE simulation and an experiment, and by comparing the results of the conventional design method.

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Snow crystals grow in a variety forms depending on the surrounding environment such as temperature and humidity. However, the anisotropy of growth rate of snow crystals is paper has tried to describe snow crystals formation in terms of topology optimization. We have solved a matter of maximizing the thermal not solved. Therefore, it is necessary to consider the anisotropy of the growth rate of the snow crystals in various ways. This anisotropic diffusion for crystallization is realized by introducing a weighting function depending on the angle to describe the anisotropy of growth rate of snow crystals. It is found that the simulation results obtained by introducing the weight function were very similar to the shape of several types of snow crystals.

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Optimal path design is a problem that is considered to have wide range of applications. In this study, we deal with a path design problem of a pattern that consists of a number of small pattern elements; a pattern consisting of characters or symbols is a typical example. In such a case, we can naturally introduce a kind of hierarchical structure to the problem. We develop an approach to this type of problem that takes advantage of the hierarchical structure and utilizes an abstraction of the paths for the small patterns that make up the entire pattern. Some example path designs are conducted; the applicability and the performance of the proposed optimal path design approach are discussed.

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There are a lot of efficient mathematical programming methods that can solve convex problem even when we have a large number of design variables. However, in the real engineering problem, most of them becomes mixed variable problem, and therefore the objective function we need to treat becomes peaky problem, and in the most case, it is not convex problem. In such a case we need to select some parameters suitable for each methodology to keep its performance. These days there are a lot of new methods especially in heuristic search as GA, EA, SA, PSO, DE and so on. Most of these methods do not sensitivity in searching. Actually, they are very powerful in the peaky problems, but their effectiveness is limited in the relatively small number of design variables. In this paper, we use some bench mark test problem, and show the effectiveness of the conventional mathematical programming method, PSO and the proposed method with respect to the number of design variables, and show the effectiveness of the proposed method.

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This paper proposed a new method of robust design using fuzzy number operation and entertains the effectiveness through comparing a traditional method of robust design. We solve minimization of the weight of spring using that new method of robust design using fuzzy number operation. Later, we entertain the effectiveness through comparing results using traditional method of robust design. Additionally, we entertain what influence the result receives by adding a new constraint. As a result, it is proven to be able to find the best design that the designer requests.

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In an industrial design, it is necessary for most products to satisfy a cost, product performance, weight, a design, and other functional requirements at a time; how to get balance is important while a product satisfies their functional requirements. Recently, with the development of the computer simulation technology, the simulation is performed before demonstration experiment, and a method to understand a physical phenomenon beforehand in a certain level of range is used. However, a flood of calculation time and cost run design itself depending on a problem when the detailed model of the product is designed by simulation. Therefore it is impossible practically to optimize for a detailed model. Therefore, an experiment and the simulation are performed with experimental design, and a response surface method predicting space of function is suggested as one of the effective plan by come out of simulation. The making of the response surface model has various methods, a study of the sequential approximate optimization technique that used the Convolution Radial Basis Function (CRBF) network that can be good approximate nonlinear function. Sequential approximate optimization technique is a method in search of a precision solution by repeated to approximate object function by a number of sample points and to predict optimized solution on the basis of object function optimization. We must regard about below when approximate optimization is actually operated. The first is that how structure an approximate function. The study can to approximate that have the advantage that tackle to benchmark problem without base function and very simple and high-speed learning by approximate of object function by using CRBF network. The second is that how sampling method sample point to have approximate function with satisfactory accuracy and lowest possible sample points. The study, add in a sample points of around 1/3 in decreasing order of the error with the set targeted value. The third has a point that regard is necessary for the manipulation of constrained condition, this is necessary for this to give a suitable condition for analysis and evaluation of the benchmark problem. Presently, this sequential approximate that used the CRBF network practical realization of industrial design that used this optimization technique. In this study, we have optimal industrial design than ever before in setting the criteria by the sequential approximate optimization technique that used the CRBF network to solve a varied benchmark problem.

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Photovoltaic power generation (PV) for commercial use is installed in the building roof of communal facilities and industrial facilities, and remarkable growth in the future is foreseen. PV panels and mounting racks are affected by loads of wind and earthquake etc, so it is important to the strength design that considers reliability. In this study, we were particularly focused on PV panel mounting racks (PV rack) for flat roof, and obtained wind loads to PV racks for flat roof from wind tunnel tests with scale model. We also quantified the reduction in strength of the fastening part by screws from bending tests of steel. In addition, we studied structural design optimization for PV racks for flat roof, as a result, a new structure of rack for flat roof was obtained for achieving high reliability and low cost.

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The main topic of this study is an estimation of loading conditions of failed structures. We deal with failed crane-hooks as an example. We examine the relation between the applied load and deformation of hook by FEM analysis. In the FEM analysis, we implement an elasto-plastic deformation analysis. The relation is recorded in the Load-Deformation (LD) database. The feature points are detected on failed hook image in order to compare the image with the recorded deformation information in the Load-Deformation database. The analysis record corresponding to the failed hook image is then obtained by means of a difference-minimization approach. We estimate the loading condition for some samples by our approach. We show the effectiveness of this estimation approach.

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An experiment on the estimation of a large number of passenger's behavior in under a train collision is studied using small train model. Here, we treated the position of passenger paying attention to a seat for seven persons. As a result of the experiment, passenger's head injury is influenced by seating position or coefficient of static friction of floor material. We discussed relation of between seating position or coefficient of static friction of floor material and passenger's head injury, and proposed four ideas reducing damage of passengers.

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To evaluate eco-efficiency of products, the authors have proposed a new evaluation method named 'total performance analysis (TPA),' which can consider cost, environmental impact and value, simultaneously. The authors have applied it to manufacturing processes. However, in the first example, since the value of the manufacturing process was constant, the method only evaluated process improvement in the aspect of cost and environmental impact. In this paper, the authors apply the method to another manufacturing process in which enhancement of the material characteristics of the product is expected. By considering value enhancement through these aspects, the method becomes able to evaluate 'real' eco-efficiency of manufacturing processes.

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Offering customized solutions is one of the important characteristics of the integrated provision of a product and a service. Generally, customer requirements for a service might change depending on the environments which customers are facing. In order to meet such changeable requirements and realize a long-term relationship, the key is continual customer-oriented service improvement. This paper proposes an engineering method to support the planning of such customer-oriented service improvement. To be more precise, an optimum resource allocation method using a Genetic Algorithm is adopted to prioritize problems to be solved for the purpose of maximizing the degree of customer satisfaction.

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It is a useful tactic that punctual flight services result in high customer satisfaction to against low cost carrier. However, today about 50% of flights are frequently delayed or canceled by unexpected incidents. These incidents must be dealt by rescheduling to maintain a high-level customer satisfaction. Rescheduling is a highly complex problem since flight services have a large number of elements which are directly or indirectly involved in each other. And it is always dealt by operator's implicit knowledge which is cultivated from his/her long experience. For these reasons, a flight rescheduling support system is strongly desired to support the difficult rescheduling problems. Our research proposes a support system of flight rescheduling. This system represents flight services as a service model consists of three sub service models: (1) transportation service, (2) operation service, and (3) maintenance service. Based on the modeling of flight services, we focus on the relationships of flight services to describe the rescheduling of flight services. Our research also proposes an algorithm of flight rescheduling by using these relationships. Then an automatic planning and evaluation method for the flight rescheduling results is proposed to support operator's decision making. At last, the proposed flight rescheduling support system is applied to an actual data of flight services as a case study. The result shows practical effectiveness of our propositions.

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The tourist industry needs to increase the competitive power. Authors advance the collaborative research that tries to attract foreign tourists. My part on the collaborative research is to propose tour design method that can correspond to various needs of customer. To attain the aim, three conditions are required. The first is to design the platform that can supply various tours. The second is to reduce operation costs. The third is to guarantee implementation of tours. This paper focuses on the third element and proposes information model for tour service design considering service constraints. The model represents three constraints that tours should fulfill. Based on the calculation of these constraints, feasibility of tours is judged.

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It is important to realize highly reliable services so that a company builds or keeps long-term relationships with customers. In order to realize highly reliable services, it's important to clarify the candidates for service failure and their factors and to take appropriate steps in the phase of service design. However, the accuracy of these analyses depends on experience and intuition of designer. Therefore, it is difficult to enumerate fatal factors exhaustively. In this paper, we propose a method for the extraction of service failure factors and introduce an application example against an existing case.

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The high-level environmental excellence should be achieved through a co-creational mechanism in which each stake holder not only optimizes its problem locally but also coordinate with each other for co-creation of a total optimal solution. This research discusses the co-creational environmental excellence with focusing on a socially exchangeable modular home fuel cell, and proposes its leading design methodology. This research introduces a viewpoint of "system of systems" which broadens the scope of a design problem from the optimization of an individual system to the optimization of system of systems by integrating local optimization, multi-agent simulation, scenario based planning, etc. The design problem is decomposed into three sub problems i.e., (i) design optimization of variety of system modules such as a fuel cell unit and a heat exchanger which meets variety of energy demand of a residence, (ii) design optimization of a service system for introducing and exchanging fuel cell modules, and (iii) design optimization of a bounty system for popularization of a home fuel cell. Some of alternative solutions of social systems are evaluated by a multi-agent simulation which predicts fluctuation of purchasing behavior for a home fuel cell in each home and then calculate cost and consumed energy. The result shows the possibility of co-creational environmental excellence in a socially exchangeable modular energy system, and the possibility of a system-of-systems approach for optimizing such an open-ended, complicated design problem toward the high-level environmental excellence.

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Recently, due to rise of the couscous of the environmental problem, an engineering designer has to consider not only product model but also whole product lifecycle. The modular design is an important technique to accomplish the each objective such as improving recyclability, reusability and maintainability. But previous work of modular design method has a problem that may search a not feasible modular structure. In this paper, we propose the modular design method considering product hierarchical functional structure. We use hierarchical genetic algorithm to optimize modular structure. Each modular structure is evaluated against criteria such as life span. Our method can search the feasible and adequate modular structure from a number of the feasible modular structure. The proposed method is applied to an inkjet printer to demonstrate its effectiveness.

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To consider the life cycle options for each part of a product at the early phase of design leads to significant reductions in the environmental loads for the whole product life cycle. We propose a life cycle design system based on 3D-CAD and a preference set-based design to support to define the life cycle options and to obtain multi-objective design solution sets design ideas which satisfy not only environmental requirements but also performance requirements. The present study applies the proposed system to a multi-objective problem for environmental and performance requirements as an example problem, that is, a cleaner model created by 3D-CAD.

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Effective reuse of parts is necessary to achieve a sustainable society. However, consumers are often reluctant to use reused parts because those parts are prone to cause failures. It is necessary to offer consumers information on the possibility of failures with reused parts in order to promote their reuse. We are proposing a method for evaluating the usability of a reused part by forecasting its effect on functions of product including the part by comparing it with information gathered from the consumers who uses the same parts. A system is developed for hard disk drive as an example part.

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Increasing the efficiency of resources is a major approach within the framework of sustainability in manufacturing. Long-life design of a product is one of the promising approaches for improving resource efficiency of the lifecycle of the product. Design methodology for upgradability enables products to be used for longer than conventional products tend to be abandoned because of functional obsoleteness before the end of physical life. One of the difficulties of upgrade design resides within prediction of future trend such as technological trends and market trends, and upgradable products should be robust against such uncertainties in the future. In order to deal with such uncertainties of future technological trends, in our previous research, we proposed a method to make upgrade plans of a product which specify the lineup of candidate components for the upgrade at each generation. In other words, the upgrade plans include information when a product is upgraded and which components are replaced with up-to-date ones. And then, the plan should be implemented by designing the product structure and geometry. However, designing the geometric model of an upgradable product which can adapt to the upgrade plan is one of the unsolved issues. For supporting this design stage, in this paper, we propose a computer-aided design method for geometric models of upgradable products. Our design method assumes that geometric constraints are included in the original product model. Based on the information, our method supports designers to reconstruct the product model to adapt to the upgrade plan and to satisfy the geometric constraints. This paper also demonstrates the availability of the method with a design example of an upgradable cellular phone.

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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.' In service design, designer's knowledge has great influence on the quality of design solutions. The authors, therefore, have been developed a computer environment called Universal Abduction Studio (UAS) to support design based on various design knowledge. This paper aims to validate the effectiveness of UAS for a service design. Especially, we specify a design stage where UAS should be used, and then conduct its application by using an elevator renewal service.

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This paper proposes methods to integrate both design and run-time environments for business systems delivered from 'cloud'. Since cloud services i.e. IaaS (infrastructure-as-a-service), PaaS (platform-as-a-service) and SaaS (software-as-a-service), shift the trend from owning to leasing IT platforms, the cloud vendors became an important part of service systems and are key players. However, structures and states of IT resources in cloud are indeterminate as they are obscured by the public interfaces of cloud services. This will become an obstacle between design and operation activities. To get past the barrier, this paper presents certain methods to bridge the gaps between the lifecycle phases. Back-and-forth data sharing between the phases can be done with the following methods; 1) defining requirements by referencing through run-time resources, 2) comprehensive architectural design of both software and virtualized resources, 3) functional/non-functional test environments and 4) run-time resource management based on non-functional requirements. Prototype tools show how this approach can establish efficient lifecycle management in cloud environment.

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Evaluating from the viewpoint of customer is necessary for service, as well as from that of providers. Thus, customer satisfaction is one of important factors on evaluating service. However, how customers perceive services changes, as they get information about services. This makes it difficult to get stable customer satisfaction. Therefore, the methodology to deal with the changes is necessary. This research aims to deal with those with customers' expectation. Expectation of service is the factor with which customer satisfaction is fixed. Customers form their expectation with information about service. This paper proposes the model of service process for customers' expectation.

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