Toward the digitization of product development process to utilize the Japanese strength of design and manufacturing, The ICT strategy based on Engineering Process Integrated Architecture (EPIA) is important in the future that systematizes product planning, development, design, manufacturing preparation, production, purchasing, sales, as a whole consistently. This shows the core element which builds the thought by showing precedents. At the same time, this shows the current situation of product design and manufacturing and the trend of building PLM systems in the Japanese industry, and shows a guidance of systematizing the upstream development process in the future. According to those thought, this shows the way of Japanese design and manufacturing that should be so in the globalization, and shows also the way of building systems by the basis of EPIA in digitizing the process of product development and manufacturing.

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Modularization and common module design have been discussed to comply with ever expanded global market. Although its ability to realize wide variety of product family are acknowledged, industries have still hesitated to take steps toward its actual implementation. One of the strongest concerns that industries have on product modularization is loss of competitive edge. Historically Japanese industries have advantages in their integral quality improvement - Suriawase. However, modular design may impede such Suriawase as interfaces among modules need to be agreed beforehand. By incorporating opportunity for Suriawase in a module that leads to competitiveness, common module design could be prominent way of design and development of product for Japanese industries. This paper proposes a computational support method for the planning of modular commonaization structure of a product line that incorporates opportunity for Suriawase. While there have been several former study on modular commonaization planning, this paper additionally discusses the aspect of Suriawase. The case study on planning of solar boat product line demonstrates the proposed method. Relevance of the proposed method was verified through audit with industrial partner as well.

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A product family is a group of functionally equivalent products that share similar features and that are grouped for planning purposes. Creating product family is an effective strategy for many manufacturing industries for its reduction on manufacturing cost and development time. This paper proposes a computational and graphical information model of a product family. Based on this model, a system is developed to support engineers and designers make the right decision on designing the optimum product architecture. "Integration Rate" between design parameters is defined to express how much integration takes place when designing these parameters. An evaluation method using "Integration Rate" is proposed to support engineers and designers determine that optimum product architecture has been developed. The goal of the research is to design the optimum product architecture, and also design the organizational structure that best performs the family product strategy.

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Products in recent is so large and complex that engineer hardly comprehend whole product system. And, design change occurs continually during development with the change of requirement. Design change makes other changes and propagates further. Theses propagations of change effect are likely to lead to unexpected redesign and make harder to deriver product development project on time and budget. Moreover, most of engineering decisions are limited by output of previous stage. And in many cases, product development is based on the previous project or other existing product. It makes more important to plan design change considering propagation to avoid undesirable effect on product development. However, most previous researches on design change have focused on the prediction how change propagates and how large effect occurs. These researches provided the insight into propagation route and effect, but they could not provide the practical guidance of design change. Therefore, in this research, we are aim at proposing a method that provides the practical guidance of design change with consideration on minimizing the effect. Our propose method based on the constraint network and qualitative reasoning.

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In this paper, we propose a ID thermal-fluid network model of phase change cooling device and show how we can estimate the cooling performance of the device by calculating its maximum heat transfer based on the ID simulation. Our calculation is achieved based on Loop heat pipe (LHP) which is a typical model of phase change cooling device. Since evaporator wick and condenser are indispensable components of LHP for determining its cooling performance, we devise a new pressure loss model of wick and a new thermal conductance model of condenser fins. The proposed pressure loss model of wick can simulate how wick dries out accurately by introducing a wick pore inactivation equation to the wick permeability model which was proposed by Blake-Kozeny. For the condenser model, in order to simulate heat radiation of condenser fins, thermal conductance of condenser is defined as a function of temperature difference between working fluid and ambient air. By applying the LHP cooling devise to a server system, we show that the proposed ID model of the LHP cooling system predicts a precise cooling performance by calculating its maximum heat transfer in 3% error compared with the experimental value.

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A user's experience of a product involves a set of transitions from one sensory state to another. For example, in the user's perception of a product's qualities, the state of their sensory modality may shift from vision to touch. Between such state transitions, users have expectations regarding their subsequent states based on their experience of a current state event. A disconfirmation between prior expectation and posterior experience evokes emotions such as surprise, satisfaction, and disappointment. Such emotions affect the user's perception of the value of a product. A noteworthy phenomenon in the perception of expectation disconfirmation is that the expectation affects the perceived experience itself. This psychological phenomenon called the expectation effect affects the user's perception of expectation disconfirmation. This effect is a key element for designing the affective experience of a product. Although experimental findings on the expectation effect exist in a variety of research disciplines, general and theoretical models of the effect have been largely neglected. In this paper, we propose a theoretical model of the expectation effect using information theory. We hypothesize that Shannon's entropy of the prior subjective probability distributions of posterior experience determines the occurrence of the expectation effect and that the amount of information gained after experiencing a posterior event is positively correlated with the intensity of the expectation effect. To verify these hypotheses, we conducted an experiment in which participants responded to the tactile qualities of surface texture. In the experiment, we extracted the visual expectation effect on tactile roughness during a sensory modality transition from vision to touch and analyzed the causes of the effect based on our hypotheses. The experimental results indicated the appropriateness of the proposed model of the expectation effect.

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Visual appearance of a product is an important factor to attract customers. Before purchasing a product, customers see a product in different visual conditions such as a photo in a catalog and a real product from certain distance. Impressions of a product appearance may differ depending on the visual conditions. If the appearance in a condition prior to seeing real one (e.g. a photo in a catalog) looks better than appearance of a real one in use environment, customers may be disappointed. Thus, minimizing such visual disconfirmation is a vital issue to keep customer's interest. In this paper, we proposed a method for analyzing visual factors with respect to disconfirmation of product appearance between different visual conditions. We used housing interior materials as a case study and examined factors of visual expectation disconfirmation between small samples and full scale samples. As a result, we found a significant effect of hybrid images (spatial characteristic) and optical illusions of color on visual expectation disconfirmation. We further explored a possibility for analyzing visual expectation disconfirmation by the use of eye gaze features of an observer. We examined relations of awareness patterns such as "as expected", "mistake", "new finding", "unexpected" and eye gaze features using low-pass pictures and original pictures. As a result, we found that Kullback-Leibler Distance (KLD) has a potential to discriminate between "as expected/mistake" and "new finding/unexpected".

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A customer's satisfaction of a product depends on prior expectation as well as post experience of the product. Environmental factors such as lighting conditions potentially control the visual expectations of product goodness. Empirical techniques of lighting design have been applied to increase the visual expectation of a product (e.g., red lighting visually produces meat freshness). Although scientific studies on the partial dependence of visual expectation on lighting conditions have been done in various research fields, a cognitive structure of the relationship remains unexplained. In this paper, we propose a hypothetical model related to the effects of lighting conditions on a customer's visual expectation. We applied the model to illustrate a causal structural relationship between lighting conditions and visual expectation of a food product. For the food product application, we hypothesized that memory color and certain visual qualities such as freshness and worm-cold sensation affected the visual expectation. We successfully constructed the causal structure of the relationship between lighting parameters and a visual expectation "looks appetizing."

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The aim of this study is to derive a design index for a tactile perception of covexoconcave. We hypothesized that interval between convex patterns affects the perception of covexoconcave as well as its height. In addition to surface texture, we assumed that touching conditions such as contact pressure, and relative velocity between a fingertip and a surface force have an influence on the tactile perception. It is known that the vibrations generated from a combination of relative velocity and the intervals between convex patterns affect roughness perception. To verify the hypothesis, we conducted a set of experiment with participants. We prepared a set of plastic plates having vertical grooves on their surfaces. Each sample differs in terms of the groove depth and intervals. The experiment consists of two phases. In the first phase, we asked participants to assess the degree of convexoconcave using their index fingers for each sample under a condition of back-and-forth motion with different contact pressures and relative speeds. We used a belt conveyor to move the sample under certain speed. From the results of experiment, we found significant effects of intervals of the convex patterns, groove depth height, and the fingertip force on the perception of covexoconcave. This results imply that a designer can manipulate tactile sense of convexoconcave not only by groove depth but groove width. In the second phase, we investigated the effects of frequency band of vibration occurred between the fingertip and the surface. To achieve low-pass and high-pass filters during a reciprocating finger movement, we masked certain parts of the sample's surface. For example, we masked the middle part for low-pass and both end for high-pass. From the result of participants' assessments, we found that the effect of less than 70 Hz vibrations on the covexoconcave perception was prominence.

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The aim of this study was to formulate a relationship between the total perceived discomfort of the upper limbs and the perceived discomforts of each degree of freedom (DOF). The biomechanical analysis was performed based on classifying the posture and load via rapid upper limb assessment (RULA) that is an observational method used to assess the total physical workload. The joint moments and the perceived discomforts for each DOF were calculated. The summary scores of the RULA and the perceived discomforts of each DOF were the objective and explanatory variables, respectively. Four approximation models (average, maximum, hybrid of average and maximum, and radial basis function (RBF) network) were compared in terms of accuracy in predicting the total perceived discomfort. The results indicated that the dominating factor for the total discomfort transitions from the average to maximum discomfort depending on the maximum discomfort of each DOF. In conclusion, among the four models, the RBF network provided the highest accuracy, followed by the hybrid model.

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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 have proposed the Idea Creation Support System (ICSS)-for an idea creation with Kando understanding process through WOM (Word Of Mouth) effectiveness. In this paper, we propose assessment system of the Kando understanding support process through the V-model with V&V (Verification & Validation) of this process for ICSS.

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In this paper, we present a practical simulation system for designing phase change cooling devices. The proposed system is based on ID thermal-fluid network analysis, which achieves good simulation accuracy by means of newly introduced models for evaporator wick and condenser fins. Based on this system, cooling performance is rapidly evaluated and design optimization can be easily achieved by automatically modifying simulation parameters in response to design changes. As a typical phase change cooling device, we focus on loop heat pipe (LHP) and confirm the ability of the system by applying it to cooling system design of server systems, where cooling performance is maximized by parametric study of ID for the number of condenser fins and polar diameters of wick.

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In design phase, it is difficult to evaluate the influence of heat density distribution by non-uniform current density on temperature distribution of conductive parts. Therefore, we are developing an electromagnetic field ? thermal flow coupling analysis system. In this research, we developed a physical quantity mapping technique for electromagnetic field - thermal flow coupling analysis. Conventionally, temperature distribution of conductive parts is evaluated by thermal flow analysis under the condition of uniform heat density. In this research, heat density is calculated by finite element method, and thermal fluid field is calculated by voxel method. We developed a technique of mapping heat density onto thermal fluid field. In the technique, defining points and units of finite element are converted to defining points and units of voxel. We compared temperature evaluated by thermal flow analysis under the condition of non-uniform heat density with uniform heat density. As a result, it is confirmed that we can evaluate the influence of heat density distribution on temperature distribution of conductive parts.

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We developed electromagnetic field - thermal fluid coupling analysis system integrated knowledge for designers. Previously, only expert designers which are familiar with both of electromagnetic field and thermal fluid could be used the analysis system. There was further improvement of usability and automation. Therefore, we developed the analysis condition setting integrated knowledge technique and automatic analysis model generation technique added-on 3D-CAD. As the result, operations of the analysis model generation work become simple and analysis model become high reliability. Designers which are unfamiliar with the analyses could be utilized with the high reliability analysis models. We demonstrated the analysis model generation work time reduced from 155 minutes to 11 minutes by applying this technique.

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Mid-range and long-range laser scanners are useful to create point-based 3D models of manufacturing plants. Although point-based representation is promising for simulating renovation tasks of manufacturing plants, its discrete and unstructured nature prevents the user to efficiently edit point-clouds. Editing capability, such as deletion, displacement and addition of components and equipment, is very important for efficiently supporting renovation tasks. In this paper, we describe two editing technologies for point-clouds. First, we introduce a method for grouping points into meaningful sets. Our method consists of three stages; segmentation by continuous surfaces, segmentation by surface detection, and segmentation by object recognition. These techniques make it possible to efficiently edit point-cloud data. Then we introduce a new collision detection method for large-scale point-clouds. This technique is useful for simulating how to carry equipments out of or into a factory. For realizing efficient collision detection, we convert a point-cloud into a 2D depth map. Objects are projected into the depth map and are evaluated collisions by depth values on the depth map. We use multi-resolution depth maps in an out-of-core manner for handling large-scale point-clouds. In our experiments, our method enables to detect collisions in real time even when point-clouds are incomplete.

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Porosity structure known as void often appear in casting objects and molded object. They often cause structural weakening of the object and it is important to analyze their shapes and distribution in order to improve manufacturing process. This paper presents an efficient method for extracting void structure of mechanical objects from CT images. Our method specifically enables to extract open voids distributed on the surface of the object based on mathematical morphology. In order to handle large CT images, we introduce out-of-core method for mathematical morphology on GPGPU with low memory consumption. In addition, we also developed several tools for analyzing void distribution for non-destructive evaluation.

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This paper studies the recovery of the height field function of an object from its surface normal vectors in terms of uniform bi-quadratic B-spline surfaces. Our mathematical formulation for explicit surface reconstruction is based on differential geometry and geometric modeling techniques. Complex examples are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

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In order to have an efficient operation of vehicles such as trucks and excavators in the mining area, it is desirable for mining industry to have a 3D geological map (3D-GeoMap) of the working area. For the construction of the 3D-GeoMap of the working area, a land vehicle, which carries radar sensors, global positioning system receivers, and gyro sensors, acquires the spatial data of working area, and then the point cloud data is processed to generate the triangular mesh. Complex examples are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

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This paper describes efficiency of introducing a modification method that we proposed into a system for deriving diverse design solutions Moreover, the guideline of system parameter is proposed so as to utilize the effect that the modification method brings The system for deriving diverse design solutions can derive diverse and novel forms However, most of the forms that have novel shapes are inapplicable as solutions because of their low mechanical characteristics For this reason, we have proposed a modification method by increasing and decreasing elements to reinforce the forms. Though, the effect of the modification method is not clear, and the guideline of system parameter is not provided Therefore, we make the effect of the modification method clear by comparing the solutions derived by the system with the modification method and the solutions derived by system without the modification method Moreover, we provide the guideline of parameter so as to utilize the effect that the modification method brings.

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A tentative assumption for design method and methodology based on algorithmic emergence is argued. "Emergence" is one of fundamental but impressive characteristics of the nature and it has been inspired number of scientists and designers. In the past when digital design methodologies were not developed, pure products by the nature are only the sources of inspirations Nowadays, artificial products by computer algorithms are attracting great attentions as the sources and many numbers of emergent algorithms have been proposed. In this paper a hybrid algorithm, which is consist of L-system and cellular automata is proposed. It generates design shape and layout. L-system is used for dealing with design concepts and objectives. While cellular automata is used for considering mechanical characteristics of the objects being emerged.

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Product engineer is being required to design attractive products in a short product development cycle from stakeholder. And, its attraction is influenced a great deal by idea creation in a conceptual design phase of this cycle. Therefore, FSA/SEV (Function Synthesis Approach with Simplification, Estimation and Validation) process has been developed. This systematic process is composed of four phases. First, the combination of large number of function is created from FSA. FSA become a conceptual design support tool that combines the PSO (Particle Swarm Optimization) and the particle method of USIT. Second phase, the combination of large number of function is simplified by the independence axiom And, the design solution is built by function structure method. Third phase, it is estimated cost of the design solution by using UCP (Use Case Points) method. Finally, it is validated quality of the design solution by using 1DCAE simulation (AMESim). However, FSA/SEV process cannot re-create a better design solution Because, FSA does not reflect the evaluation results that obtained by the estimation phase and validation phase. To solve this problem, this paper proposed a method that reflects the evaluation results that obtained by the estimation phase and validation phase. And, this paper described these phases via example to the refrigerator. As these results, we discuss effectiveness and plan future works for the much further improvement.

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Market competition is become more and more intense following globalization of products. Sometimes new superior technology is also born, disappear without being accepted by consumers and market. In this environment, companies is necessary to predict the trend of the market and consumer, the input timing and the development trend of new technology the trend of the market and consumer. Against this background, the authors analyze "Analysis of a Technology System Evolution by Focusing on a Technology Maturity". This analysis is based on theory of the evolution theory of the technical system of Altshuller. In this paper, we focus on WOM(Word of Mouth) and analyze" Analysis of a Technology System Evolution by Focusing on WOM ". This analysis is based on "Innovator theory". Analysis of WOM, we intended to understand the establishment of disruptive innovation, the trend of the market and consumer, the input timing and the development trend of new technology the trend of the market and consumer. We found WOM is affecting the technology system evolution that tends to increase the number of WOM.

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In recent years, personal fabrication by digital machines such as 3D printer and CNC router etc has attracted interest at the place of manufacturing. We suppose that personal fabrication is important for engineering design education in order to obtain design thinking. In this report, we describe and discuss the example of our practice for engineering design education considering personal fabrication.

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In the design of a Product-Service System (PSS), it is important for designers to embrace the objective of amplifying the value of product by combining with services throughout its life cycle. For designers who have only learned traditional engineering, however, it is difficult to think in this manner spontaneously. In order to resolve this issue, the authors have developed an educational business game named EDIPS that enables designers to consider the value amplification by combination of products and services Moreover, the effectiveness of EDIPS has been verified by using questionnaire data obtained in several workshops. However, actual learning effects through the game-playing have not been evaluated in an objective way. This paper analyzes changes in participants' understanding before and after the game-playing and activity transition during the game-playing. On the basis of the results of analysis, the learning effect of EDIPS is evaluated and discussed.

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A new evaluation methodology of 3D-CAD practice was introduced on mechanical design education in a College of Technology. The main results obtained are as follows: (1) We could reduce the effort of marking of works to be submitted, without decrease of the evaluation quality: (2) If we supply the parts which cannot be edited, students who are behind the schedule can practice the assembly in 3D-CAD. (3) The evaluation method prevents a plagiarism of another person's data. Therefore we could propose a high efficient and high quality evaluation methodology by usage of 3D-CAD.

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This paper discusses how design education or design learning should be in Japan, by referring to the design thinking education at d school at Stanford University and Olin College.

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The demand of embedded systems is increasing with next-generation smart society and highly informative society. The embedded system is used for various products. And it is required to the development filling the system demand with short term and low cost. The present embedded system development is performed by functional distribution for hardware software and combining them. Consequently, it was a subject that do not fill the system demands but feedbbucks occur. It is because optimization of the whole system which includes functional distribution for hardware software by a system design phase is not performed enough. In this research, we performed the optimization of embedded system using SDSI-Cubic in the system design phase. In this research, it is performed by adding the new modeling method for performing functional distribution to hard software to the system modeling by the conventional SysML.

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Japan was one of the leading nations of the technology developed by comparing and adjusting design which solves the problem in adjustment by designers together. Currently, mechatronics products are accounted for manufacturing market in the world. Functional failure are occurring and increasing by the difficulty of the software with the rapid complication of product function. Since the comparing and adjusting design method based on existing way is failing to keep pace with sophisticated features, in brief the occurrence of rework is the cause at downstream of the design process. Therefore, conceptual design in the upstream stage is important, the authors improve the efficiency of the conceptual design by proposal of integrated physical simulation method using SysML, Problem Frame, and Modelica. Integrated physical simulation method is constituted by six steps, as follows: (1) representation of the requirement diagram, (2) elaboration of the requirements by the problem frame, (3) clarification of the state transition by state machine diagrams, (4) functional design that is based on Modelica, (5) simulation implementation using parametric diagram, (6) evaluation of simulation results. Proposed method can be readily selected conditions which satisfy the requirements by using score sheet to evaluation of the result In this paper, the authors apply proposed method to a design of an intelligent crane and speed up mode, and confirm that proposed method is effectively used in the upstream stage of design Further, the authors understand that the design is efficient m thinking on the assumption four hierarchical structures.

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The design of multi-disciplinary products, i. e., mechatoronics products, requires integration of knowledge of various domains, such as mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and software engineering. A model-based development approach tends to support this problem. However, a designer builds models focusing on a particular aspect of the product, and consequently models have less information than the real product Design failures may happen due to such lack of information. Therefore, it is also important to validate the solution by physical prototyping. This paper investigates the process of reflective interaction of model-based development and prototyping by means of design experiment. The design experiment of the autonomous ball transporting robot and sorting system, which is developed by LEGO MINDSTORMS, is carried out. Based on its result, how designers operate models used in model-based development effectively or ineffectively, how designers effectively operate prototypes to discover and correct problems, and so forth are turned out. Finally, the requirements and conditions of the system for supporting the reflective design process are briefly discussed as its representative patterns.

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In recent years, with the advancement of technologies and globalization, the complexity and diversifications of the products are being increased in parallel. At the same time, to improve its efficiency, the process and the IT infrastructure for the product development need to be sophisticated and globalized. The products are also required to be multidisciplinary and reasonably optimized while there are a lot of trade-off and negotiations among the departments and domain experts. In this situation, there are newly emerging problems and challenges like ensuring the consistency and traceability on the complex system of the products and the idea of systems engineering receives much more attention. In this paper, we introduce the RFLP approach to achieve systems engineering based on V-model and model-based development and propose the guidance of its application for early-stage product development. We also made some studies on its effectiveness with some examples of printer and car body design for each specific target.

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Modularity is vital to engineer complex products and machines. We assert that modularity can emerge from searching desirable machine structures constrained to life cycle costs in manufacturing, maintenance, and disassemblability. Compared to the conventional methods, computational experiments that maximize machine performance and minimize life cycle costs yield machine structures that are modular and tractable.

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This paper proposes a computational modeling and simulation methodology to analyze the mechanism of Hydrogen Embrittlement of Aluminium alloy. The Hydrogen Embrittlement is the process especially by which high-strength Aluminimum alloy (7000 series), become brittle and fracture following exposure to hydrogen. The mechanism starts with lone hydrogen atoms diffusing through the metal. The Hydrogen Embrittlement is represented as a mechanism which starts with lone hydrogen atoms diffusing through the Aluminium alloy. When these hydrogen atoms re-combine in minuscule voids such as dislocation accumulation and grain boundary, the combined hydrogen atoms create high pressure from inside the cavity which they are in. A computational simulator is developed and succeed to simulate the forming process of the granular boundary, movement of dislocation, and fracture.

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For the stabilization of insulation performance in the resin-molded insulators, strong adhesion between the resin and metal is required. In this paper, design method of fatigue strength on adhesive interface between metal and resin in consideration of multiple scales was investigated. Test pieces were made by covering Cu and SUS cylinders, which have some values of surface roughness, with epoxy resin. The interfacial strength was evaluated with shearing tests of these test pieces. The effective adhesive surfaces of those cylinders were evaluated from surface observation with a laser microscope. The interfacial strength increased with surface roughness and the adhesion-strength index (u+B) The adhesion-strength index (u+B), which had been proposed in previous paper, were calculated with the effective adhesive surface and the interfacial strength. The adhesion-strength index (u+B) gave a constant value with various surface roughnesses for each metal. Based on the strength evaluations, the interfacial strength could be controlled, and it became clear from the results that the interfacial strength can be improved up to the confidence level. The results also show that design of the interfacial strength over multiple scales can improve the reliability of electric power equipment.

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Service design has been attracting concerns as not only an important research topic but also a practical issue in business. Though a large amount of methods and methodologies to analyse and design service processes have been proposed, how to choose an adequate method or methodology in response to features and design objectives of services still remains as a challenging issue. In this study, the authors propose a meta-methodology for service process design to determine a suitable method or methodology for a design object and explain how it is applied to service cases.

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At the present, companies are struggling to make a profit and still compete with other companies that are selling the same products at lower prices because of cheaper labor in other countries. It is therefore becoming difficult for many manufacturers to increase their profits by only selling products Because of this predicament, Product-Service Systems (PSSs) have begun to attract attention as options for income generation. Many researchers have developed design methods and evaluation tools for PSSs and have validated their effectiveness. However, guidelines for using these methods and tools in the design process are rare. It is therefore difficult for manufacturing companies to transition from selling products to offering PSSs. As a first step for developing guidelines for PSS design, this paper reviews existing design methods and evaluation tools as outlined in the Proceedings of the CIRP International Conference on Industrial Product-Service Systems, 2009-2013.

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Drawing images of sustainable manufacturing is a highly important problem for manufacturing industry. For this problem, "scenario development" is seen as an effective means In scenario development, the developers consider several future visions and transition paths qualitatively and quantitatively. In spite of effectiveness of scenario development, it is difficult and exhaustive task. In order to tackle this problem, referring the ideas of design engineering, we propose a new concept of "scenario design" and develop a scenario design support method. We defined the scenario design as a set of procedures for developing a scenario grouped into plotting, describing, and evaluating. Based on this concept, we proposed a computable scenario model and proposed a scenario design process. The proposed model includes sub models expressing intermediate states between the motivation for developing scenario and a documented scenario. The proposed design process includes four steps in which the scenario is designed in stepwise manner. As an implementation, we proposed a backcasting scenario design support method and developed backcasting scenario design support system. As a case study, using proposed method and support system, we designed Sustainable Manufacturing Scenario, in which economically and environmentally sustainable futures of Japanese manufacturing industry is envisioned. Through the case study, the effectiveness of the proposed design method and support system is verified.

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Fuel cell cogeneration is a promising technology of energy systems in pursuit of a sustainable society. However, it is unpredictable how many fuel cell cogeneration systems will be diffused in a region since there are many future uncertainties, such as people's lifestyles and national energy policies. To tackle with this problem, this paper describes scenarios to analyze the diffusion of fuel cell cogeneration systems for apartment buildings. We develop a simulation model for estimating the diffusion of residential energy systems, in which conjoint analysis is undertaken in order to analyze consumers' preferences. In a case study, several scenarios are written for estimating the diffusion of fuel cell cogeneration systems, where the region of interest is apartment buildings in Kansai Area, Japan from 2013-2030 The scenarios described in the case study differ in terms of nuclear energy policies. The results show that the number of fuel cell cogeneration systems in 2030 reaches 99-200 thousand depending on national energy policies.

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Life cycle design is a promising approach to minimize environmental load and resource consumption throughout the entire product life cycle. One of the main design targets in life cycle design is "the balance of resource circulation," which is a critical issue about quality and quantity of products, components, and other resources in the life cycle especially for solving how to utilize resources of products. While designing products and their life cycles across multiple generations has a wider range of potential to utilize the resources effectively, such multi-generational design makes it more critical and difficult to solve the circulation balance than designing single product life cycle. The objective of this research is to propose a support method for designing balance of resource circulation across multi-generational product life cycles. For this purpose, this paper proposes representational scheme for multi-generational product life cycles. This scheme consists of four models. Two models represent design information of multi-generational products and their life cycle flows, respectively. Based on these models, the other models represent state of products and their components through their life cycles and their amount distribution in each life cycle process. This method employs life cycle simulation technique to estimate their state and amount.

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An important process for the reuse and recycling of end of life products is their disassembly. In general, manual disassembly is a labor intensive and costly process. Especially, works for removing connection parts take time and cost. This paper proposes a design method for the disassembly of products with split-lines. The split-lines enable to destruct a product into desired shapes in order to extract target components for their reuse and recycling. This method classifies the components of the product into shells that surround the target component and adds split-lines on the shells. A case study showed that the dismantling of a LCD TV with split-lines reduces the number of manual processes needed for extracting a target component.

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In recent years, the interest in environmental issues has increased Also the regulation of the law, such as the Home Appliance Recycling Law has also become stricter. Therefore designers are required to consider not only product performance but also whole product lifecycle. Until now, many studies about layout design have been made. Generally speaking, the conventional layout design method focuses on assemblabitiy and functionality but disassemblabily does not consider adequately This paper describes fastening optimization between components to improve disassemblability in the layout design. The purpose of fastening optimization is to determine the number of fastener and fastening method between the parts and to minimize disassembly time with fulfilling functions and assemblability of the product. In order to demonstrate the proposed method and confirm its effectiveness, this paper applies a laptop to cases study.

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For pursing a low-carbon society, a variety of new products, such as photovoltaic (PV) systems and clean energy vehicles (CEVs), have been introduced to electricity networks. While the dissemination of such energy-saving products will affect electricity networks, it is difficult to predict to what extent those products will be disseminated in our society. To explore how future electricity networks might unfold, this paper describes future scenarios of regional electricity networks, focusing on the residential and commercial sectors. For developing these scenarios we develop simulation models that estimate the diffusion of PV systems and CEVs, regional electricity demand, and the effects of peak-cut of electric load using electric vehicles as storage batteries, respectively. As a case study, several scenarios of regional electricity networks in Toyonaka City, Osaka, Japan in 2030 are described. The simulation results show that the peak of electric load in the residential and commercial sectors can be reduced to 68-70% by the electricity management.

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The transition from a consumption-oriented society to a reuse-based society is needed for the effective use of resources and environmental protection. However, it is difficult for a user to make appropriate decisions for maintenance of his/her parts because of the wide range of choices of action and the huge amount of information required. To support the user's decision and to promote the reuse of parts, we have developed a part agent system that manages information about individual parts throughout their life cycle. A part agent is a network agent that contains the information of its corresponding part and follows the movement of the part via the network throughout its life cycle. This paper describes a new mechanism of a part agent that proposes appropriate maintenance actions for the corresponding part by estimating its expected value, cost, and environmental load based on the predicted information about its life cycle.

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It is important for companies to prevent service failure from occurring in order to continually make a profit In order to prevent service failure from occurring, at first, service providers need to predict the factors that cause service failures and their relationships. However, service failure factors and their relations are varied compared to physical products because service failures occur due to elements of uncertainty such as human factors. Therefore, service designer should identify the critical failure factors from a number of failure factors. On the other hand, each service provider has different recognition for relations between service failure factors. Therefore, it is necessary to resolve conflicts about recognition for them. This paper proposes a method for supporting discussion on conflicts about recognition. Concretely, the difference of recognition is visualized. The proposed method is verified through its application to a practical case.

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In order to achieve a successful service, service providers should maintain service quality and always satisfy their customers. To be specific, the provision of highly reliable service is essential for service providers to survive in their target market. To enhance the reliability of a service, it is important to take appropriate measures against service failures in order to prevent them from occurring. This paper especially focuses on supporting service failure measures planning. At first, the priority number of service failures should be determined because it is difficult to take measures against all failures due to resources such as money and time are limited. Therefore, this paper proposes a method for supporting the determination of priority number of service failure. Concretely, effects of service failures on customer requirement are quantified. The proposed method is verified through its application to a practical case.

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A welding support system has been developed, in which case data composed of welding beads image, welding condition and results is defined in XML. When welding bead image case data is not satisfactory, supplementary comments such as the causes of the results and advices to improve the quality are provided. The system was evaluated by twenty welders and two third of them judged the system as useful.

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Cloud platforms have provided functions of software and hardware through the internet and enabled fast integration of target business applications. This will change the roles of system integrators, reducing verification and implementation tasks and increasing demands of analyzing, planning and improving the business applications. The development knowledge about similar services will be rather significant for this analytic and collaborative work with their clients. However, conventional practices indicate that the forms of knowledge have some discrepancies in adapting to reuse requirements. To improve the knowledge reusability and enable asset-based development, this paper proposes development and reuse methods: (a) a method of imprinting reuse, remanufacturing and recycling strategies to assets, and (b) a method for identifying a suitable asset for reuse with set-based assimilation of both designers' and operators' intentions. A case study following hypothetical development scenarios shows that these approaches can improve flexibility of asset reuse and strengthen the practice of mass customization. Then system integrators can maintain their assets efficiently and reuse assets effectively.

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The importance of service industries becomes large especially in advanced nations since an economic activity shifts to service industries However, as compared with manufacturing industries or overseas service industries, the productivity and growth rate of the service industries in Japan are still low. To overcome such situation, application of information communication technologies should be promising way the production control method of the manufacturing industry or scientific/engineering techniques. The objective of this study is improving the productivity of food service industries, a staff shift scheduling method based on combinatorial auction is proposed to realize optimization of labor input and improvement in added value, so that the service satisfaction composed by consumer, employee and manager satisfactions improves. The effectiveness of the proposed method is discussed with the results of computer experiments.

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In travel agency or travel bureau, tour planning is conducted by combining some tourist attractions based their knowledge from experience. However, this planning means cannot meet various tourist needs and evaluate feasibility of some tours quickly. Therefore we aim to solve these problems by construction of tourist attraction architecture conducted in product variety design or system architecture. In this study, we analyzed tourist information by DSM for construction of tourist attraction architecture in order to support travel agency planning tours.

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For design, analysis and evaluation of service, using service function models and service delivery processes integrally is important. However, concrete supports for inter-relating between the function models and the delivery processes have not yet been developed. In this study, we support constructing service delivery processes based on the lowest-level function models. We stratify the Workflow Patterns by ISM (Interpretative Structural Modeling) method. Based on this result, we propose a method for supporting the choice of appropriate patterns from stratified the Workflow Patterns and the construction the service delivery processes. Furthermore, we attempt implementing suggestion method to the service CAD system.

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Distance and duration of flight for paper planes exist in guinness record and the world tournament. Throwing method and flight are significantly different in the competition of distance and duration of flight. Tournament Participants get the best throwing technique by experience. The experiment was based on the rules of the world tournament by changing the parameters by prepare a plurality of airframe and quality of paper for the purpose of flight performance improvement. Consequently, paper quality and airframe required for flight duration improvement and flight distance extension are the direct contrast, that the strategy is different has been discovered.

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