Development of design tools to reduce design complexity

• Main Author: Ng, Collin Cheng Chow.
• Other Authors: Sim Siang Kok
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Manufacturing::Product engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/39858
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

In an increasingly competitive, intensive and globalised market, the need to diversify is greater than ever before. To remain strong in competition, companies combined product model variety and high rates of technological changes to meet the needs and demands of the consumer market. However, implementing these new developments increase the design complexity in products or systems. Design complexity caused by design changes, design uncertainty and poor control measures usually lead to redesigning which has a huge impact on the schedule, cost and quality of the product. In retaliation to reduce and manage complexity, a proposed framework is developed based on the concept of Modularisation. Many existing methodologies created have built upon the foundation of decomposition of a product into modules with specific interfaces. Certain methodologies have been highlighted in this project to create a proposed framework as a design tool, which aims to ascertain the complexities in relation to the objectives stated. The requirements of three case studies will incorporated in this report to illustrate the overall effectiveness of the proposed framework. The Sony Walkman and CD Walkman are both used to study generational design changes in various platforms of the player. The third case study of a similar genre of consumer product, i.e. the MP3 player is used to justify the framework as a recent technological innovation. This case study will highlight some prominent technological trends affecting the design changes of electronics consumer products over time. In addition, the exploration of using the proposed framework to predict future changes will be analysed in the discussion on product evolution of music players. The findings in this report encompass some of the important technological advances witnessed over the years, envisioning the framework to predict future development trends of a product. Albeit some of the assumptions made, the actualisation of an optimal technical solution in new product development can be enhanced by employing the framework. On the contrary, the steps to developing this proposed framework is realised by careful considerations of existing methodologies, in meeting the intention of reducing complexity.