Methods in Product Design: New Strategies in Reengineering

As industries adopt consumer-focused product development strategies, they should offer broader product ranges in shorter design times and the processes that can manufacture in arbitrary lot sizes. In addition, they would need to apply state-of-the-art methods and tools to easily conduct early product design and development trade-off analysis among competing objectives. Methods in Product Design: New Strategies in Reengineering supplies insights into the methods and techniques that enable implementing a consumer-focused product design philosophy by integrating design and development capabilities with intelligent computer-based systems.

The book defines customer focused design and discusses ways to assess changing demands and sources, and delves into what is needed to successfully manufacture goods in a demanding market. It reviews proven methods for assessing customer need. Then, after showing how changing needs impact the reengineering of products, it explains how change can be efficiently achieved. It details how IT advances and technology support customer-focused product development, discusses cutting-edge mass customization principles that maximize cost-effective production, and illustrates how to implement effective predictive maintenance policies.

Methods in Product Design: New Strategies in Reengineering provides methods, state-of-the-art technologies, and new strategies for customer-focused product design and development that allow organizations to quickly respond to the demanding global marketplace.

About the Editors

Ali K. Kamrani is an associate professor of industrial engineering at the University of Houston, where he is founding director of the Design and Free Form Fabrication Laboratory. He received his BS in electrical engineering in 1984, master's in electrical engineering in 1985, master's in computer science and engineering mathematics in 1987, and PhD in industrial engineering in 1991, all from the University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky. His research has been motivated by the fundamental application of systems engineering and its application in advanced design and development of complex systems.

Maryam Azimi is a software project manager at Lenovo Corporation. She received her PhD in industrial engineering from the University of Houston in 2011. Her research interests are systems engineering, data mining in health care, Lean Sigma Six, and project management.

Abdulrahman Al-Ahmari is a professor of industrial engineering at King Saud University, Saudi Arabia, where he serves as dean of the Advanced Manufacturing Institute. He received his PhD (manufacturing systems engineering) in 1998 from the University of Sheffield, UK. His research interests are in analysis and design of manufacturing systems, computer integrated manufacturing (CIM), optimization of manufacturing operations, applications of simulation optimization, FMS, DOE, and cellular manufacturing systems.