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Globalization, public environmental concern and government legislation are challenging the Swedish industry to be more efficient and increase its efforts in research and in the development of methods and tools for product development and production. Furthermore, the manufacturing industry is changing from producing solely hardware products towards the inclusion of services or soft offers to add more value for the customer. As a result, there are an increased number of stakeholders involved in the early phases of product development that has an interest in the products design and performance during its life cycle. This challenges the way we manage and share experience internally as well as between companies.The intellectual property of a company is a key asset when competing on the global market; hence, the ability to capitalize on experiences from a company's development processes as well as products in use becomes increasingly important. Also, the European manufacturing industry and the EU commission conclude that the industry has to move from being "Resource-based" to "Knowledge based" to add more value and avoid competing solely on low-cost. It is recognized that an expensive manufacturing solution has a negative effect on a products total life cycle cost and the ability to earn profit. Hence, manufacturing processes is constantly a target for improvement efforts and experience gained in manufacturing has a potentially high impact on design decisions in new projects.The aim of the research presented here is to improve manufacturability and avoid reoccurrence of design flaws in ongoing or new projects. The research has provided a better understanding of the mechanisms for experience re-use and developed methods and tools for feedback of experience from the manufacturing phase back to the earlier phases in the products life cycle. The work has been carried out within two projects funded by the Swedish governmental agency for Innovation Systems and industry. The first project was DLP-E, Digitally Linked Processes with a focus on Experience re-use and the second project was Robust Machining, aiming for more robust machining processes within manufacturing.The research approach has been to combine the design research methodology and participatory action research. These methodologies together with an initial research question have guided the work:RQ: "How can experience from manufacturing processes be tied and reused to impact the governing product and process definition?"Branches within engineering research committed to his area are concurrent engineering and design for manufacturing although this has usually been limited to general rules of thumb and qualitative methods for designers. Recently however, statistical methods such as Design for Six Sigma and other methods for Robust Design are introduced to affect earlier phases of PD to achieve improved manufacturability.Knowledge Based Engineering (KBE), represents a technology that provide the means to capture and automatically re-use engineering knowledge in an engineering design environment. Methods and tools from this area have been used as an initial approach in this research. A functional product perspective puts a focus on the activity where the product is used rather than on the tangible product itself. From an experience feedback perspective, experience is gained during these activities and possibly re-used if there is a learning process.This thesis presents an initial descriptive case study at two manufacturing companies that provided a better understanding of current practices for experience re-use and identified factors that influenced the feedback of manufacturing experience in product development. Based on initial assumptions and the results from the first descriptive study, a theory on the mechanism for experience feedback and requirements on a manufacturing system was formulated in a prescriptive study. A second descriptive study utilized a prototype to identify if the theory was applicable in an industrial environment and if it addressed the factors it was supposed to address. The research has been an iterative process, whereas results from the descriptive studies have influenced new prescriptive studies, delivering methods and tools, which in turn have influenced the ongoing work at the company where the research was conducted.The main contribution from the research is a framework to support re-use of manufacturing experience. The framework decompose the multifaceted task of experience re-use by identifying typical activities involved in the feedback process and categorizing the "elements of experience" in terms of knowledge, information and data. Combined with an engineering process improvement approach, processes are streamlined and value is added to the product. KBE techniques are used to capture and re-use product and process knowledge in an integrated manner. The applicability of the result has been validated in descriptive studies as well as within company improvement efforts.The research supports a frontloading approach in product development by enabling manufacturing experience to have an impact on the design definition in the early phases of product development. As a consequence, the risk for costly re-design later on in a project is reduced. ; Godkänd; 2011; 20110408 (petand); DISPUTATION Ämnesområde: Funktionella produkter/Functional Product Development Opponent: Senior Lecturer Claudia Eckert, Open University, Department of Design, Leicestershire, United Kingdom Ordförande: Docent Ola Isaksson, Volvo Aero AB, Trollhättan Tid: Onsdag den 8 juni 2011, kl 09.00 Plats: E631, Luleå tekniska universitet

Today's manufacturing industry faces hard competition, both in the form of competitor's low cost outsourcing and to reduce labour cost. Increased public consciousness for environmental pollution and stricter government legislation are also drivers for a more efficient product development process and companies competing on the global market must continue to improve there methods and tools to gain an advantage. The company's intellectual properties and the ability to capitalize on experience from earlier projects becomes a key factor when competing on the global market. This thesis work explores the mechanisms for knowledge reuse and suggests methods and tools involved in the product development process to improve the use of manufacturing experience in order to prevent manufacturing flaws to reoccur in new product development programs. The research is carried out in a project funded by the Swedish research agency VINNOVA together with the industry, through the MERA program. The project aims to improve the Digitally Linked Process and has a focus on Experience reuse. An initial research question was formulated to address the problem and guide the research towards a better understanding; "How can experience from manufacturing processes be tied and reused to impact the definition of governing product and process definition?" A study was set up to investigate the current practices and to aid the research in formulating an approach to improve methods and tools for Reuse of Manufacturing Experience (RoME). The study was conducted at two companies, one in the aerospace industry and one in the automobile industry. The "How" and "Why" questions supported a case study approach The study provided a better understanding of the problem and pointed at a number of opportunities to increase the use of manufacturing experience. One of the findings pointed out in the survey was the lack of a working process for preventing recurrence of a bad design in manufacturing. Furthermore, the study revealed a potential improvement in the use of capability data and problem reports that are captured and stored in databases, today more or less solely used in manufacturing. A new research question was formulized as the improvement of the RoME process where set in focus; "How can the process of experience reuse from manufacturing phases be improved to better impact earlier phases in product development?" The current process for finding and accessing process capability data from a Design Engineering perspective were investigated and described as well as the process to retrieve problem report notifications regarding specific design features of a component. The process where found to be both time consuming and tedious, and as a result of that, seldom used by design engineers. Key enablers having a significant impact on the RoME process where identified. The ability to find and access experience captured in the manufacturing phase. The ability to provide data in a context familiar for the receiver in order to facilitate the learning process. An improved process for reuse of manufacturing experience is proposed and includes methods and techniques to target system integration for search and access. A service oriented product life cycle management (PLM) architecture is proposed as a mean to address the topic of finding and accessing manufacturing data. The standard for PLM Services 2.0 provided by the Object Management Group (OMG) and the increased maturity of web service technology provide the possibility to integrate knowledge rich engineering application in a dispersed heterogeneous system environment. The ability to provide data in a context that is familiar to the receiver is addressed by developing a web based graphical user interface (GUI). The web based GUI presents the manufacturing data in a design context where manufacturing process capability data and problem report notifications are presented in a component view. This supports the design engineer when searching for relevant experience from earlier projects by associating the process capability data and problem reports to a specific design feature, e.g. a flange, and how it relate to the manufacturing process. A web based application is developed to demonstrate the concept. The application presents the product assembly (bill of material) together with the manufacturing process activities and corresponding process capability data in the same view, providing a contextual environment that is tailored for the receiver. ; Godkänd; 2008; 20081111 (ysko)