DeMaMech: EU-Japan Collaboration in Higher Education Student Exchange Program

Offer of Research Topic

Offer from	University	Osaka University
	Faculty/Department/Institute	Department of Mechanical Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering
	Group Name	Design Engineering
Research Theme		Knowledge Management System for Designing Product Families

Brief Explanation

Design of product architecture and product families is an essential direction in the coming market place for satisfying a variety of customer needs with moderate cost, increasing manufacturing flexibility, etc. Since its contents are conceptual and much more complicated than ordinary design of a product, knowledge based approaches are indispensable for facilitating success in product development. In this study, under the knowledge management framework developed by the group, some models on operations and evaluations in designing architecture and families are formulated, they are implemented as computer programs, and the entire system integrated with them is applied to some case studies under the cooperation with Japanese manufacturing companies for their verification and refinement of models. An example of product family deployment: Screwdrivers over market segmentation grid Developing software to support product family design

Research Steps	1. Literature survey and development of fundamental programming skills (two months) 2. Formulating models and algorithms for design operations and evaluations (three months) 3. Implementing modules on the entire system in Java (two months) 4. Case studies and their analysis (two months) 5. Writing thesis (one month)
Period	10 months.
Necessary Background, Knowledge, Skills	Fundamental knowledge about engineering design and design-for-X paradigm. Computer programming skills (Java or other object-oriented ones). If necessary, some references can be specified.
Further Information	http://syd.mech.eng.osaka-u.ac.jp/
Contact Person	Prof. Dr. Kikuo Fujita (fujita@mech.eng.osaka-u.ac.jp)