Recently, economic conditions and the structure of industry have been changing dramatically. To cope with this condition, service engineering is proposed. In service engineering, we have already proposed some methods for supporting to design services with the aim of deriving creative ideas based on the similarity among existing service cases. However, there are no methods for supporting a process of designing target service's functions directly. In this paper, we propose the methods for supporting to derive service functions with the aim of fulfilling customer requirements.

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Product sound has been recognized as a factor of kansei quality. Most of conventional work for designing product sound quality has focused on finding relations between sound characteristics and human kansei. The perception of product sound is, however, affected by background noise as well as the product sound characteristics, i.e. loudness, sharpness etc. The context where a user interacts with a product may affect to the perception of sound quality. In this paper, we propose to relate evaluating kansei quality of product sound in a laboratory and that in a real environment. Then we research how back ground noise and context change value of kansei quality of product sound.

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In the design of product surface texture, it is important for a designer to grasp the effects that come from the difference between visual expectation of texture and its tactile perception. Such difference itself may affect the perceived texture quality and causes positive and negative emotion, i.e. delight by exceeding expectation and disappointment. In this paper, we propose an evaluation method of surface texture to reveal the effects of prior visual expectation on posterior tactual experience before and after touching a surface. In the method, to find out the contributions of texture attributes on such effect, we conducted a sensory test using combinations of visual and tactile texture samples that are virtually synthesized using a half-mirror. From the result of the sensory test, we extracted causal rules of the visual expectation effects on tactile experience using reduct calculation in rough set theory. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the method, we conducted a sensory evaluation experiment using 14 plastic texture samples having different textures as case studies.

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Understanding the customer's requirement is important for conceptual design. Successful companies are providing the high quality service by which customer receive the Kando and satisfaction. Thus, the element of customer's satisfaction is necessary for great success in business. Therefore, authors proposed the new system-Idea Creation Support System (ICSS)-for an idea creation with Kando understanding process through WOM (Word Of Mouth) effect. This paper reported the gathering Kando quality process of ICSS and the trial of ICSS. As a result, we confirmed that ICSS obtain the Kando qualities for deploying the matrix of QFD.

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With the maturation of consumer demands, Kansei design has been becoming an important issue for product designs in addition to function and structural performances. In this work, we studied the structural optimization method involving the Kansei design for a road-bicycle frame as an example. The strength and the rigidity calculated by FEM are used as the evaluation functions for the structural performances. The Kansei performances such as individual and elegance are evaluated by the Semantic Differentials technique and quantified. The sizes of the cross sections at both ends of the main tubes are defined as the design variables for optimization. By using the response surfaces between the design variables and the performances obtained, the road-bicycle frame is optimized under various objectives and constraints conditions with the Sequential Quadrilateral Programming method. The calculated optimal designs and Pareto optimal designs are demonstrated to verify the effectiveness of this solution for the design with the structural and Kansei performances.

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This paper proposes a comprehensive evaluation of multiple muscle loads and procedure for determining optimum solutions for ergonomic design problems. The comprehensive evaluation of multiple muscle loads are formulated as a multi-objective optimization problem, and the optimum solutions of each participant are obtained. In addition, determination of the optimum solution is formulated as a min-max problem. The proposed method is applied to the design problem of handrails position for the sit-to-stand movement. The height and distance of handrails were the design variables, and surface electromyography of anterior deltoid, triceps brachii, rectus femoris, and tibialis anterior were measured. Result from the optimization, it is found that the comprehensive evaluation proposed in this study probably expresses the sense of the participants more precisely than the use of any of the muscle loads. In addition, the optimum solution for all participants is determined, and the validity of the proposed method is examined.

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Due to rise of our standards of living, people come to request not a quantitative satisfaction but a qualitative satisfaction from the product in recent years. In order to solve this problem, we consider the method that is to understand customers' needs and the sensibility by making the persona, and using neural network. The persona can be understood as an image of customer, and this is used by some companies to grasp customers' needs. The neural network is used to decide to feature of products. Its learning method is a backpropagation. In this paper, a product object is a cellular phone, and we take surveys about cellular phone on students of Toyota technological institute. Based on these surveys, we make a persona, and make a decision about features of a cellular phone. We confirm the effectiveness of this method based on this example.

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Because of the relaxation of regulations by Japanese government, Japanese airline companies can sell various airline tickets in recent years. However, it is difficult to plan the best sales strategy to maximize their revenues. According to an analysis of actual sales data which airline companies have, there are some types of customers and their booking and purchasing behavior has each character. This paper discusses and proposes one model of decision-making process of choosing tickets depends on customers and a simulation system using a method of Multi Agent Simulation. In this research, we developed the simulator of booking and purchasing behavior for domestic airline tickets in order to know how to change the market demand and sales when airline companies change their sales strategies.

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FOA/TB (First Order Analysis for Torsion Beam Suspension) has been developed for suspension designers. In order to reflect the needs of suspension designers, FOA model tends to become more detailed and complex. As a result, design parameters increased and became a useful tool for suspension designers. On the other hand, since FOA/TB has a capability of detailed modeling of torsion beam itself, it is also used by torsion beam designers. However, in the design phase, torsion beam designers cannot obtain all the parameters included in the detailed FOA model and had to provisionally set the unknown parameters. In this paper, in order to overcome this problem, we introduce a method for abstraction and masking of design parameters based on experienced torsion beam designers' knowledge. Further, we will show the improvement of usability using the new concept FOA/TB.

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This paper proposes a new color universal design method without restricting color combinations using dithering technique. A key idea is that a solid color and a dithering of darker and lighter colors to approximate the solid color may look as similar color by normal color vision whereas they could be distinguishable by color vision deficiencies because one is solid and the other is a pattern of dark and light colors. Efficacy of the idea is confirmed through some experiments.

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It is very important that the engineer can confirm the shape and profile of the gear before the gear cutting. We have designed and developed the gear generation simulation system. Using developed system, designer inputs basic gear dimensions and optional rack shape, the gear and rack profile can be gotten quickly. However, it doesn't correspond to the VGR rack & pinion. In this research, the simulation system of VGR rack & pinion is developed. We proposed the method of three dimensional modeling of VGR rack. Therefore, the simulation system became possible to confirm shape of VGR rack made three dimensional model. Developed system is integrated into the gear generation simulation system in the near future.

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Product quality is one of the critical issues in food production lines. The contaminations such as metallic or plastic, organic materials are eliminated by machine inspections. However, human inspectors usually take care of the final evaluation. Even though there is no contamination in the products, appearance of products may decrease the quality of the products. For example, even though air bubble has nothing to do with the taste of Tofu, customers do not purchase such Tofu which contains many air bubbles. Therefore, human inspectors review the Tofu package to check the defective products because of the air bubble, which is hard to be processed by machine inspection. This paper presents an image processing-based air bubble detection method to determine the quality of Tofu products, using some evaluation criterion based on experiments, and discusses the feasibility of this method in comparison with the human inspection results.

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Thanks to the advancement of internet technology, audio/video communication using video conference systems over the internet is becoming popular these days. However, non-verbal communication such as hand-gesture is regarded as the key challenge for better remote communication even in those internet-based video conferences. This research proposes a robotic arm approach to represent the hand-gesture in remote communication. This paper describes the acceleration analysis based hand gestures and its implementation to remotely control a robotic arm.

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Observation has been recognized as an effective approach to finding user's potential needs in the upstream design process. In user observation, we observe a user while he/she interacts with artifacts and the environment to find potential problems that he/she faces. Oftentimes, a memo of findings is recorded. After the observation, we share the observed findings with other observers and discuss their causes and solutions. In this paper, the authors discuss three issues regarding the current state of observation: 1)a cognitive tradeoff between finding facts related to potential needs and keeping recording the findings, 2)incorrect description on the event due to the lack of information and the observer's prejudice on the objects, 3)difficulty of sharing findings with others with reality. To respond to above issues, we propose a new recording and sharing scheme and its support system. The proposed scheme consists of two phases. In the first phase, the observer observes the users who interact with a target product and keeps memos of their findings using digital pen. The digital pen memorizes the time stamp and the coordinates of each handwriting. In the second phase, the memos made in the first phase are divided into one by one and shown on digital sticky note, i.e. tag, on the PC display. Those tags are linked to scenes videos related to documents of each tag. These functions allow observers to make two things. One is to break through the cognitive tradeoff between findings and keeping recording events by reducing observer's cognitive load for accurate documentation with linked scene video. Another is increasing accessibility of related scene video that provides observers to share their findings with correct understanding. We carried out experiments to demonstrate the effectiveness of the support system using a user observation video in an office environment.

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Small-size embodied interaction robots are required for use in home. These robots are expected to shake hands with human to promote embodied interaction. Therefore, in this paper, we develop a small-size handshake robot system for a generation of a handshake approaching motion. The handshake approaching motion has two motions. The first motion is a handshake request motion that the robot stretches its hand to a human as requesting a handshake. The other motion is a handshake response motion in which the robot responds a handshake when the human requests a handshake to the robot. These motions are generated by the small-size handshake robot system. Furthermore, a handshake approaching motion between two small-size handshake robots is also generated. The effectiveness of the small-size handshake robot system is demonstrated by sensory evaluation of these handshake approaching motions.

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We have already developed a speech-driven embodied group entrained communication system called "SAKURA" for activating group interaction and communication in which speech-driven CG characters called InterActors with both functions of speaker and listener by generating communicative actions and motions are entrained one another as a teacher and some students in the same virtual classroom. In this paper, we analyze the eyeball movement of lecturer in group communication, by using an embodied communication system with a line-of-sight measurement device. On the basis of this analysis, we propose an eyeball movement model, which consists of an saccade model and a group gaze model. Then, we develop an advanced communication system in which the proposed eyeball movement model is applied to a speech-driven embodied group entrained communication system. The communication system generates the eyeball movement of lecturer on the basis of the model, and it generates the head and body entrained motions of characters by using the speech input alone. The system would be effective for group embodied interaction and communication as well as remote interaction and communication support.

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We have developed an immersive car driving simulator combining an immersive display K-Cave and a car cockpit system with a steering force-feedback feature. An immersive car driving simulator enables a driver to feel distance from the car to objects such as walls, people or another cars, so the driver can operate difficult tasks such as driving along or turning to the narrow road. Experiments for a test subject was carried out to validate the immersive simulator and analyze the driver's behavior.

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In this paper we propose a method to identify material parameters used in Biot's model using the homogenization method based on the asymptotic approach. Biot's model is useful to express dynamic behaviour of sound absorbing material, but needs several material parameters to be identified. In the proposed method, we utilize the homogenization method for sound absorbing material, which has been developed recently by the authors. First, characteristic displacement functions in solid phase, characteristic velocity functions and thermal function in fluid phase are calculated using a unit cell model with periodic boundary conditions. Then, macro scopic Young's modulus and Poisson's ratio is obtained via homogenized elastic tensor. Porosity and Air flow resistivity can be calculated directly. Tortuosity, viscous characteristic length, thermal characteristic length are idenfitied through homogenized equivalent density and bulk modulus using non-linear least square method. By using a poroelastic material of simple micro structures, we demostrate Biot's parameters can be identified with appropriate accuracy.

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Recently the development of the nano satellite becomes active. In general, nano satellites are expected to be developed faster and cheaper than the large satellites. The launching cost of the piggyback satellite is reasonable, and then a cost of a piggyback satellite is often decided by weight. Therefore it is important to reduce the weight of satellite for cost. We have to design of satellite structure considering the severe mechanical environment of launching. The natural frequency of the satellite should be higher than the value decided by the rocket and the satellite should withstand the loads during launch. In this paper, we will propose the design of the satellite whose dimension is 400 millimeters cube. The satellite supposed to be launched by H-II A rocket and we focused on the trade-off design between minimization of mass and maximization of natural frequency under the maximum stress condition for optimizing the satellite structures.

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Recently, new rule CSR(Common Structure Rule) was enforced to oil tankers. The design corresponding to CSR is used on an actual site. However, the design based on the experience has been. Therefore, then, it aims at the achievement of the optimum design in a central section of the oil tanker by using the optimization software connected to PrimeShip-HULL effectively. It is used that the restriction condition judgment of PrimeShip-HULL is the one with Excel file. Software Smartoptimization of this laboratory development is used, and optimized. The target function is assumed two one with a different minimum weight and minimum cost, and calculated by a method near an actual calculation. The cost becomes important information to change the design idea in the grasp of a present design proposal and the future because it can show separately by cost.

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The partial modularization of the point is pushed forward for the reduction of the building cost of the engine part and a maintenance performance gain now in the shipbuilding industry. And the conception imagined that in the future, assemble the whole engine part out of the ship, and install in the hull last. However, for this realization, it is necessary to remove some decks and change conventional hull structure greatly, and it is very likely that the strength of the hull and a vibration characteristic change greatly. The study analyzes about strength with to realize the total modularization of the engine room in the future. And the purpose is getting dynamic knowledge leading to suggestion of the new design plan. It is necessary to redesign the hull structure around the engine region radically to get the present conditions and equal performance with aspects of strength and vibration after having realized this modularization. Based on dynamic knowledge provided in this study, utilize structural optimization and design conception ship deployed the new engine room module.

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This paper proposes a new thread shape of aluminum beverage bottle in order to reduce the opening torque of bottle cap. Firstly, it is proved that the theoretical opening torque of the saw-toothed thread is smaller than that of the existing thread shape based on the calculation of the torque of the conventional threads. Then, a simulation of aluminum bottle model, thread shape of which is changed to the saw-toothed thread, is implemented by using a commercial software ANSYS. According to the simulation results, the opening torque can not be reduced due to the effect of skirt and contact range between bottle and bottle cap. So the new model is proposed whose skirt is also changed to the saw-toothed thread and whose contact surface of bottle is changed to line, contact surface of cap is changed to circle. The simulation results shows that the opening torque of the new model is reduced 12% compared with the existing bottle model. Finally, the optimization technology is applied to search optimum thread shape. It is confirmed that the thread contact angle between bottle and cap is the most important design factor for reducing opening torque and when the contact angle is zero degree, the opening torque reaches its minimum.

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It is necessary to create appropriate configuration and geometry at upstream design stage to satisfy design specifications at detail design stage. In our study, a design system is developed for generating gear trains under design constraints on specified area. The design specifications are input torque, output torque, rotation speed, rotation direction and design space constraints. The spur gear train mechanism is generated based on the generation of random numbers with probability distribution. And then positions of the gear axis are optimized by using the conjugate gradient method. The advantage of the configuration constraints to generating effective gear trains is reported through several examples.

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In manufacturing, process planning considers how the order in which a product is manufactured affects elements such as machining time, power consumption and quality of the final product. However, it is common that a large number of tools and processes are required for the completion of a product, therefore the number of possible processing sequences can be enormous. It is impossible to quickly select the most suitable processing sequence in such cases. Therefore, we solve the problem of deciding the processing sequence in manufacturing using solutions obtained by a k-Shortest Paths algorithm. We develop a decision support system that can evaluate the efficiency of each processing sequence according to the criteria desired.

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This paper evaluates CO_2 emissions generated during the manufacturing phase of global production network and discusses requirements analysis of green sustainable policies of global production network to prevent carbon leakage arising from transnational production. It calculates CO_2 emissions from electricity used in manufacturing, emissions during transport from mining to manufacturing countries and emissions during transport from manufacturing countries to market. A case study of electric vehicle (EV) production includes outcomes calculated CO_2 emissions in the manufacturing phase and transportation phase: for production in China, India, Thailand, Germany, Japan and Mexico to market in Japan, German and Singapore. It is illustrated that CO_2 emissions during manufacture of EVs vary significantly, depending on the carbon intensity from electricity generation and each country's technical efficiency, and transport has a minor influence on emissions.

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In order to increase value and reduce environmental loads of a product life cycle, it is important to design a lifecycle flow as well as designing product. For designing them, it is essential to compare design information of a product with that of lifecycle flow. The objective of this paper is to propose a consistency management system between product and lifecycle flow for lifecycle scenario-based product design. For this purpose, we propose a product model and a lifecycle flow model as a representational scheme and define the linkages between these two models. And we propose a consistency management method by defining two levels of consistency; namely, model consistency level, and requirement fulfillment level. A case study indicates that the relationship between the product model and the lifecycle flow model is successfully represented and a designer can design a product and its lifecycle flow in an integrated manner.

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Manufacturing companies encounter many uncertainties in planning long-term strategies for making their business sustainable. As a decision-making tool in the business world, designing scenarios is a promising approach for examining various business strategies by drawing various possible situations in the future. The purpose of this paper is to propose a method for supporting the design of scenarios of planning business strategies. In this method, we describe a business strategy scenario using existing sustainability scenarios. The method intends to help describe business environments by reusing and extending descriptions of sustainability scenarios. A scenario about solar panel business is described using the proposed method. Results illustrate that the method succeeds in describing a detailed business environment by deploying an existing sustainability scenario, and finally, obtaining several business strategies based on the business environment. In addition, our method clarifies the logical structure of the scenario, enabling to review rationales for deriving those business strategies.

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This paper addresses a modeling methodology for visualization of a system of a hardware and software. Today, based on energy diversification, re-design of current system for supplying electric power is required. Using renewable energy sources, the electric power supplying system is supposed to be changed drastically on the system level considering economic reasonability, stability, robustness for disaster. This paper proposes a system design methodology based on modeling, simulation, evaluation, and restructuring process. A fast cycle from modeling and evaluation allows a designer to design better system. The renewable energy sources such as sun shining or wind speed easily changes according to the nature condition. In order to reflect the characteristics of renewable energy, this paper proposes a function-behavior-structure modeling method for visualization of electric power supply. Based on the FBS model, the system design and evaluation is accelerated.

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There are a number of long-term energy scenarios toward establishing a sustainable society, particularly a low-carbon society. However, it is unclear whether such scenarios are feasible in terms of resource depletion. This paper proposes a method for assessing balance of long-term metal demand and supply based on existing energy scenarios. The paper focuses on copper depletion since introducing low-carbon technologies (e.g., electric vehicle (EV)) may induce massive copper consumptions. Our method proposes two approaches (macro approach and micro approach) in order to estimate copper demand from two different angles, i.e., economic growth and dissemination of products. Results illustrate that the cumulative copper consumptions exceed the copper reserved in the earth by around 2050. The increase in copper consumptions results mainly from world economic growth led by emerging countries, while dissemination of EVs has a minor impact on it.

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Although many scenario development methods have been proposed, these methods are too abstract and have no specific procedure for designing backcasting scenarios. This paper proposes a method for supporting design of backcasting scenarios using logic tree. In this method, logic tree supports determining the structure of a backcasting scenario and creating storylines, which are outlines of sub scenarios. The logic tree and the storylines support describing scenario texts. As a case study, we described a backcasting scenario on "breakdown" of Japanese manufacturing in 2050. As the result of case study, the logic tree systematically supports determining the structure of this scenario and generating its storylines. And composing scenario text is supported by detailing the logic tree and the storylines.

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As global environmental issues have become aggravated, "Eco" become a competitive advantage in the business because of increasing consumer's environmental consciousness. However, it is difficult to lead eco-business to the success in both of environmental and economic aspects. For promoting Eco-business, it will be effective to support finding out eco-business ideas and evaluating feasibility of eco-business. The purpose of this study is to propose the methodology that supports the design of eco-business based on a set of general rules. For this purpose, this paper proposes the method of settling on business model based on idea and the business evaluation. Especially, this evaluation methodology pays attention to the merchantability of the business model. In addition, the methodology is verified by a case study.

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We consider a manufacturing process to be a proportion element block which calculates from in and out costs ratio. So we can describe a cost flow in manufacturing processes by block diagram. The block diagram transforms one block using equivalent transformation of control engineering. We use same method on CO2 emissions. Then a cost and CO2 emissions on manufacturing processes can represent a proportional coefficient respectively. So we can easily calculate a cost and CO2 emissions before and after manufacturing process change.

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This paper points out that the importance of emotion would increase with expanding globalization and with rapid and frequent changes in global optimization, While the 20^<th> century could be described as a closed word, the 21^<st> century is now becoming more and more an open world where rationalities do not hold anymore so that we have to find new ways to optimize globally. Emotion may be regarded as our wisdom of how we can cope with the widely and extensively changing situations. Thus, emotion is expected to play an important role for spatial and temporal global optimization.

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In the present paper, first, we describe the measurement of brain activation response during rotating a handle of a lathe by near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). In the frontal lobes oxy-Hb tended to increase during rotating a handle of a lathe at specified number of rotations. Second, we describe the measurement of brain activation response during lathe operation in a VR lathe environment and an actual lathe environment by NIRS. The results show that the brain activation response in the VR lathe environment was very similar to that which occurs during lathe operation in the actual lathe environment.

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As interest in nursing-care robots continues to grow, not only safety and reliability but also low acoustic noise and energy-saving performance are expected. In this paper, we describe our prototype of a robotic arm. The prototype is a link mechanism using magnetic particle brakes at each joint in place of servo motors. The magnetic particle brakes are proportional torque devices controlled by varying the excitation current. The link mechanism can hold up a target object and passively support a positioning action. The dynamics of the prototype are analyzed first, and then the self-weight compensation and the resistance torque display to support the positioning action are realized by appropriate actuation of the magnetic particle brakes.

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Industrial products make various sounds, and the sounds cause people comfortable or uncomfortable. In our study, we measure the brain activation response using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) and quantify senses of discomfort about the sounds. In this paper, we describe the measurement of the brain activation response using NIRS when the subjects listen to engine sound and sign sound. The results show that the oxy-Hb of the temporal cortex in the left hemisphere increased when the subjects listened engine sound of sharpness or brightness.

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Today, developing various types of products in a short design lead-time is needed to satisfy consumers' needs. In this study, a method to support expansion of design requirements using product cases is proposed. Based on the result of design protocol analysis, requirement expansion process is decomposed into four sub-processes as follows; collect product cases based on keyword given by the designer, screening of the collected cases, extraction of elements contained in the cases based on the result of screening, and decision to adopt extracted element to requirement of the current design. On the screening process, the designer's intuitive decision is applied to each case. On the extraction process, entity, function, and attribute elements are extracted according to the result of screening. For attribute, information that supports to determine range of its value is also provided. Then, the proposed system was developed and case studies are done using the system.

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