Developing flexible products for changing environments [Elektronische Ressource] / vorgelegt von Andreas Bischof

Andreas Bischof

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• Publié par: technische_universitat_berlin
• Publié le: 01 janvier 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 19
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 23 Mo

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DEVELOPING FLEXIBLE PRODUCTS FOR
CHANGING ENVIRONMENTS



vorgelegt von
Diplom-Ingenieur
Andreas Bischof


Von der Fakultät V – Verkehrs- und Maschinensysteme
der Technischen Universität Berlin
zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades
Doktor der Ingenieurwissenschaften
Dr.-Ing.
genehmigte Dissertation



Promotionsausschuss:
Vorsitzender: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Rainer Stark
Berichterin: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Luciënne Blessing,
Berichter: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Henning Meyer

Tag der wissenschaftlichen Aussprache: 23.09.2010

Berlin 2010

D 83



































Chance favors the prepared mind
Louis Pasteur (1822 - 1895)

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The work reported in this dissertation has been undertaken as part of the Interdisciplinary Research
Project (Interdisziplinärer Forschungsschwerpunkt) IFS 3/2, which is financed by the Technische
Universität Berlin. I gratefully acknowledge this support and express my thanks.
This dissertation is the result of my research at the Engineering Design and Methodology
Group at Technische Universität Berlin. The work would not have been accomplished without help
and inspiration from other people, both professionally and privately. Thus, I will here take the
opportunity to express my gratitude:
My sincerest thanks go to my supervisor Prof. Luciënne Blessing, the former head of the
Engineering Design and Methodology Group. Prof. Blessing was a wonderful supervisor during my
time in Berlin. She not only provided me with the opportunity to work in an ambitious development
project but she also managed to get me fully devoted to engineering science. I will not forget our
countless discussions, all, but the skype ones, ending with a stack of 100 books, 1000 papers and a
million new ideas, but the invaluable feeling, that I am (put back) on the right track. Thank you for
your never ending support.
I also owe Prof. Henning Meyer, who not only a friendly co-supervisor for my research, but
a great support in the development project as he stood behind every decision I made and well
managed the balance of backing and freedom during the whole process.
I would also like to thank Prof. Rainer Stark for his kind willingness to chair my doctoral
examination committee.
Moreover I would like to thank Prof. Michael Schmidt-Kretschmer not only for sharing his
industrial product development experiences, but also for making every (journey to a) conference
entertaining. Special thanks to Dr. Jan Klett for being a wonderful colleague and friend and for the
trip. Thanks to Sebastian Adolphy, who was not only always there to discuss either engineering
stuff or science stuff or the more odd parts of life, but who was always available for a cup of coffee
and another one. I would also like to thank Kilian Gericke, who was always there with a straight
forward solution to every problem, or at least a valid opinion on it.
Furthermore I would like to thank the secretaries of the EDM Group, especially Barbara
Schmunkamp, who not only perfectly handled the bureaucracy, but also managed to do it all with a
friendly smile.


Additionally I want to express my thanks to Vicky, Almuth and Gregor from the bioreactor
project and all the other people inside and outside TU, who supported my work in one way or
another. A very special thanks to my student assistants Sebastian Rabe and Henning Förste – you
did a great job and I will not forget our discussion about the guidelines, cars and everything else.
Thanks to all my friends, who interrupted my work or at least did not give up trying the last
years. Thanks for every break, every outside opinion on my work and for every hour we spent
neither talking about work, nor engineering nor science. A very special thanks to Christine who
made going to work exciting and finishing early even more exciting. Your disturbances were most
welcome support.
Finally I would like to thank my parents who were a great support, and who encouraged me
to do whatever I think was, is and will be right. Special thanks to my brother Matthias who cheered
me up in difficult times, gave me old hands advices for the scientific life and old brother advices for
the rest of it: A&D



Andreas Bischof
Berlin, 18.06.2010

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ABSTRACT
The subject of this thesis is flexibility in product development as an attempt to handle changes in
the product environment and uncertainty. The specific focus is on the approach of developing
flexible and robust products to handle this challenge.
Changes in the product environment and different kinds of uncertainty are identified to be
among the biggest challenges in product development. The crux is, that especially in the early
phases of the product development process the knowledge about the finished product is low, and
future changes cannot easily be identified. In contrast the possibilities to influence the product are
high.
Flexibility is often proposed as an all healing universal tool to handle this challenge.
Therefore existing concepts of flexibility in the product development context are analyzed. Yet,
current research in this field proves to be an insufficient theoretical basis for understanding,
measuring, enhancing and benefitting from the potential of flexibility. Especially the approach of
intentionally developing flexible products in order to derive benefits during the development
process is far from mature, as well from the academic point of view as from the product developer’s
point of view.
Therefore a new definition of product flexibility is derived in this work, which specifically
takes into account the strong correlation of product flexibility and product robustness. Moreover
this research is about answering the following key questions:
• What makes products suitable for changing environments?
• How to develop flexible and robust products for changing environments?
• Is the approach of developing flexible and robust products useful for handling changes in
the environment, uncertainty and changes during the development process?
The Design Research Methodology (DRM) approach is carried out in order to answer these
questions. In short, one answer to the first question, which is addressed in this work, is that products
can be developed specifically flexible and/or robust to handle changing environments.
As the existing approaches for developing either flexible or robust products are considered
insufficient a new support for the development process is proposed in this work as the answer to the
second question. It consists of 34 design guidelines, which are consolidated from various


approaches. These guidelines are used within the development as guidance, support and reminder of
the flexible and robust product design approach.
To answer whether or not the new support and the specific product design are useful to
handle changes during the development process a study with engineering designers is carried out:
18 single product developers have to work on the same design task. Ten of them have been
instructed with the new guidelines for developing flexible and robust products before the test and
are asked to use them on the design task. The other eight product developers have to work on the
task without specific instructions. While working on the task requirements and constraints are
changed three times in order to simulate the changes, which occur in real product development
projects. Data is collected with questionnaires before, during and after the developing, with photo
documentation and time measurement; the quality of the results is evaluated by experienced
engineering design scientists.
The results of the study are promising, yet controversial as they are not all along with
theory. Here it is highlighted that in general the participants working with the new design guidelines
are higher motivated and less disturbed by the changes presented during the study. Their results –
the generated concepts and designs – are slightly better. However, the differences on quality are not
statistically significant. Working with the guidelines seems to cause additional stress for the
participants. Nevertheless, the participants evaluated the presented guidelines easy to understand
and useful for developing flexible products.
Even though the results are not all satisfactory – not all research questions could be
answered clearly – this research underlines the potential of flexibility in product development,
especially of developing flexible or robust products. Thus, it provides a solid basis for future
research and proposes a useful support for developing flexible products for changing environments.


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ZUSAMMENFASSUNG
Die vorliegende Arbeit befasst sich mit Flexibilität in der Produktentwicklung als einen möglichen
Ansatz die sich verändernde Produktumgebung und Unsicherheiten in den Griff zu bekommen.
Dabei liegt der spezielle Fokus auf de