Fredrik Elgh

Jönköping University · Department of Industrial Product Development, Production and Design

In this paper, a work procedure developed to support the collaboration and progress in the research project IDEAL – Integrated product and production platforms supporting agile and demand-driven industrial product realisation – is presented and its functionality discussed. The research project involved in total 13 researchers, five manufacturing co...

To achieve relevant research results, collaborative research is deemed essential in several engineering and management disciplines. When the addressed research questions are associated with larger societal challenges the need for collaboration between various actors and disciplines becomes even more urgent. In this paper, the development of a trans...

Product development is multidisciplinary with high uncertainties necessitating coordinated decision-making between design and production. This paper presents a method to work with production requirements to support production preparation during product development aligned with different product and production maturities. The work was conducted in c...

Industrialized housebuilding (IHB) is a sector within the construction trade where product platforms have been introduced from the mechanical industry to manage the product architecture and allow mass customization. The aim of this study is to analyze product development projects connected to the product platform and the production. For IHB, the ba...

A vast body of research has described product platforms as strategic enablers for increased business competitiveness, but there is a lack of empirical research describing what types of assets that are used in industry as elements in a platform. Previous research has suggested a platform as a “collection of assets shared by a group of products” and...

The production preparation process (3P) enables collaboration between design and production engineers during product development but its efficiency is limited by the abundance of documentation of manufacturing constraints and capabilities. Empirical studies showed that use of production requirements can increase the efficiency of 3P, however, the s...

Management innovations are an important source of competitive advantage, but we lack knowledge on the implementation process, not least in small- and medium-sized companies (SMEs). Recognising that psychological ownership (PO) represents a crucial aspect of the implementation process, we address micro-foundational characteristics of the implementat...

Design of sheet metal forming tooling is currently based on that experienced tooling designers with good knowledge of how stamping tools previously have been designed and operated in production, apply their knowledge when making a new design. For retrieving former designs, they often need to rely on their good memory. In this paper, an automatic me...

This work strives to support companies overcoming their challenges in the New Product Development (NPD) by enhancing the co-development of product and production with the integration of Design and Process Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (respectively DFMEA and PFMEA). A literature review and a case study with two Swedish manufacturing companies h...

Changing customer requirements, regulations, technology and regulations, shift to automated assembly and product variety are common challenges faced by many manufacturing industries and alignment between product and production system is critical for business success. Design engineers should be aware of production constraints and capabilities to ens...

The introduction of product platforms has been acknowledged as a strategic enabler for increased business competitiveness. A vast body of research has described different aspects of platforms, but little work has been done on defining or delimiting the different types of elements that may build up a platform. Design assets include platform elements...

Improved resource efficiency, in industry and throughout the product life cycle, is a challenge and potentially, integrated product and production platforms can act as support. The aim of this study is to explore the current state of the technical platform in two industrialized housebuilding (IHB) companies from a mixed product architecture perspec...

Industrialised house building (IHB) design incurs complexities as extensive engineering is required due to high customization. Companies use different production strategies (PS) to develop building components ranging from standardised to customised depending on the requirements. Platform-based product development has received increased attention fr...

Design for manufacturing and assembly (DfMA) has gained increased attention in the construction industry as the process has been industrialized and shifting towards a combination of factory prefabrication and assembly on site. The aim of this study is two-fold. Firstly, to apply the DfMA approach in the redesign of a steel bracket from a post and b...

Product platforms have been used as a strategy for manufacturing companies to stay competitive and have provided a means that fulfils the need of agile and demand driven product realisation. However, a link to the production system development is often missing. Knowledge is required concerning how a platform approach can be applied in the productio...

The ability to offer customisation has been considered as a competitive advantage for industrialised house building (IHB) companies. Product platform approaches have been acknowledged as one of the prominent ways to improve both internal and external efficiency. However, the use of traditional platform-based strategies does not suffice for the desi...

By building upon the prior work exploring the nature of practicing and knowing in collaborative research (CR), this article argues that focusing on how trust evolves in collaborative dialogue could enhance the learning potential in CR projects. Drawing from 42 workshops within a CR project, we analyze how dialogue and learning practices develop tru...

This book focuses on the implementation of Hoshin Kanri. It is a response to most books on strategic planning that tend to downplay the implementation and only describe the fully implemented planning process. The power of this book originates from a project in which a team of five professionals over a period of three years implemented Hoshin Kanri...

New business opportunities are created when the advantage of changeable manufacturing systems expand beyond increased freedom in production location to increased freedom in product design. However, there are new challenges to overcome, including improved ability to design and adapt products when requirements from stakeholders quickly change and/or...

Purpose: The purpose of this research is to support the customization ability for industrial house building companies striving to offer individualized products but with a strategy which includes a production facility. This is accomplished by analyzing the as-is state in terms of existing engineering assets and by proposing a to-be state using the...

Purpose The purpose of the study is to develop knowledge on the implementation of Hoshin Kanri (HK) in small manufacturing companies. Two research questions are addressed: (1) what factors influence the implementation of HK in small manufacturing companies? (2) How do the factors influence the implementation of HK in small manufacturing companies?...

Progressive stamping tools are widely used in mass-production of sheet metal components and their performance is critical as the design of the tool impact the cost of the manufactured component significantly. Knowledge reuse is an important part of successful design in general, and in progressive stamping tool design in particular. In the study des...

Industrialized house building companies producing single-family housing must efficiently respond to customer needs and contingent requirements during product specification. These are the incentives for the adoption of high-level mass customization, addressed in this research, by exploring the information modeling of product platform use. Knowledge...

Vertical integration of supply chains has enabled industrialised house-building companies to develop and use product platforms. Constant changes in the external business environment, such as customer needs, legal requirements and demand fluctuations, continually compel companies to strategically align their product platforms with market position an...

Knowledge-intensive product realization implies embedded intelligence; meaning that if both theoretical and practical knowledge and understanding of a subject is integrated into the design and production processes of products, this will significantly increase added value. This book presents papers accepted for the 9th Swedish Production Symposium...

The transformation from a traditional to an industrialised house building system requires a strong focus on the design phase, as several factors must be considered and the decisions taken impact both productivity and the value created for customers. The main purpose of this study is to explore the existing challenges and outline the critical succes...

Industrialised house builders in Sweden have been challenged to meet the demand for housing solutions as the population has increased at a faster rate. As a result, the housing industry is currently faced with objectives to improve productivity and internal efficiency while also controlling the production cost of houses without compromising externa...

There is a demand on the current markets of industrialized house building for higher product design flexibility and customization. One of the success factors in addressing this challenge efficiently is the formalization and use of product platforms through information technology applications. However, there is a lack of knowledge on how product pla...

House building projects are distinctive, and the degree of customisation creates bottlenecks in the design process and challenges for production, which results in longer lead time and higher costs. Aligned with a product platform approach, previous studies have introduced cost-effective approaches such as standardisation, modularization, configurat...

Demanding markets and complex products are only some of the reasons that make changes and variations inevitable through different stages of product realization. From early phases of product development to downstream production phase, these changes or variations cause failure either directly or by propagating to other phases, triggering more fluctua...

Sheet metal forming tools play an important role in the manufacturing of many products. With shorter product life cycles and demand for shorter time to market for new products, the process for design and manufacturing of stamping tools becomes a critical part. Stamping dies are often designed and manufactured by smaller, specialized companies. For...

Detta är en bok för dig som arbetar med eller är intresserad av strategiskt arbete. Till skillnad från traditionella böcker om strategisk planering, där analysen är i fokus, handlar denna bok om hur man ska systematisera strategiprocessen, det strategiska arbetet. Författarna tar sin utgångspunkt i Hoshin Kanri, ett inkluderande och transparent arb...

The selective laser melting (SLM) process has created new possibilities for the manufacture of new lightweight jet engine components with lattice structures replacing solid sections. Hopes are to reduce the density of the component and thereby saving weight. To introduce the new manufacturing process, the components need to be redesigned and verifi...

Design automation can be used to support efficient information handling and knowledge processing in computer-based product modelling, as well as make possible new design exploration and optimisation capabilities. To be able to utilise and manage design automation systems over time, it is important to understand how the disciplinary methods and mode...

A rapidly growing strategy in product design and manufacture, with great potential to improve customer value, is mass-customization. The main idea is to divide the product into modules that can be shared among different product variants. This will support a wide range of options for the end customer to select among, while an internal efficiency, si...

The house building industry has been characterised as less productive compared to the manufacturing industry with numerous and challenging activities including a complex integration process. For the last 20 years, industrialised house building has gained increased research and industry attention and is identified as a potential way to improve the o...

Mass customization and product individualization are driving factors behind design automation, which in turn are enabled through the formalization and automation of engineering work. The goal is to offer customers optimized solutions to their needs timely and as profitable as possible. The path to achieve such a remarkable goal can be very winding...

Industrialized house-building companies predefine parameters in platforms. In the strive to identify efficient information flow with automation and configuration, the design process requires a breakdown of the product structure of a building to digitally communicate between information systems. The level of predefinitions varies between industriali...

Industrialized house-building (IHB) is a sector offering unique products by adopting an engineer-to-order (ETO) strategy. Customer satisfaction is achieved by adaptation of product solutions and the fast-paced introduction of new technology in combination with short lead-times and cost-efficient production. Product platforms is acknowledged as a st...

A common strategy which has in many cases become a necessity in product developing companies is to apply platform thinking to some extent. Engineer-to-order (ETO) companies are firms that need to invest in a significant amount engineering time in each product ordered by customers. These companies have in the past been known to not be fully able to...

Currently, the additive manufacturing process SLM (selective laser melting) is of high interest in the aerospace industry for the manufacture of jet engine components. This is driven by several factors such as reducing weight and minimizing the variation in the manufacturing process. In the paper, the state of practice in designing SLM parts is exa...

When manufacturing tooling inserts for HPDC (High Pressure Die Casting), several manufacturing steps such as milling, heat treatment, electro discharge machining and finally surface treatment are involved. By instead manufacturing the insert by SLM (Selective laser melting), the process is expected to be quicker and with less material waste compare...

Transdisciplinary processes have been the subject of research since several decades already. Transdisciplinary processes are aimed at solving ill-defined and socially relevant problems. Many researchers have studied transdisciplinary processes and have tried to understand the essentials of transdisciplinarity. Many engineering problems can be chara...

The advances in additive manufacturing (AM) for high grade steels has in some cases made it possible to manufacture die inserts for demanding processes like high pressure die casting (HPDC). However, several challenges remain before this becomes commonplace. There is still a need of secondary manufacturing steps on the insert after printing. Also,...

Modularisation and platform strategies enable efficient utilization of resources through economies of scale and are therefore increasingly important for manufacturing companies. On the product side, modules are often considered the basis of product platforms by enabling a variety of product variants by combining interchangeable modules into differe...

Original equipment suppliers (OES) that develop unique products are continuously faced with changing requirements during both the quotation and product development processes. This challenge is a different reality from companies that develop off-the-shelf products for the end consumer, which use fixed specifications and where product platforms have...

Mass-customization has forced manufacturing companies to put significant efforts to digitize and automate their engineering and production processes. When new products are to be developed and introduced the production is not alone to be automated. The application of knowledge regarding how the product should be designed and produced based on custom...

With a glulam-based post-beam building system, a variety of building solutions is offered on the market for multi-story buildings. The building system must be adaptable to the demands of each project. However, short lead-time, efficient manufacturing and assembly must be ensured. The use of product platforms has been acknowledged as an enabler to m...

In most development processes, there is an early phase dedicated to creative concept development aiming at finding solutions to the problem at hand. To arrive at a high-quality solution, several ideas may be conceived and evaluated. However, emerging information and knowledge about product concepts is often not shared on a corporate level since onl...

Transdisciplinary research (TDR) has been the subject of discourse in the past few decades, but has bot been studied much in the context of engineering problems. Many engineering problems can be characterized as ill-defined, like open innovation, adoption of new technology, business development, and the adoption of the Industry 4.0 concept. Transdi...

Many manufacturing companies are suppliers that deliver unique solutions to different business customers. Intense quotation work, with a high demand on accuracy and quick response, and development projects executed in close collaboration with customers and other actors characterize these companies. The projects can run for years or a few weeks depe...

In the aerospace industry, Additive Manufacturing (AM) is quickly gaining ground. When optimizing the design of an AM component, all life-cycle aspects need to be considered. It is by no means limited to the classic weight / stiffness optimization of the topology alone. The AM component design must comply with an array of requirements on for exampl...

Product platform development is a well-established approach for reusing product knowledge in the form of geometry and its configuration rules and constraints. Explicitly defining all platform components is not always possible however. This is why a product platform approach where the processes of realising platform components also are supported is...

Custom engineered products require an engineer-to-order approach in development, quotation preparation and order processing. This work reports the result of a three-and-a-half-year project were the objective was to develop means for implementation and management of computer support for engineering design and production engineering of customized pro...

Today, CAD-system are used for much more than just geometric modeling. They are complemented by various software and information sources forming a complete environment for handling all life-cycle aspects of the product. In such systems, the CAD-system works as a central hub. The software and information sources may be of various types making the sy...

Product development is an iterative process, partially due to changes in both company internal and external product requirements, resulting in changes to the product under development. These changes might require recapitulation of design rationale and result in re-doing assessments and syntheses of different kinds. One way to support this work is t...

One important part of the manufacturing process of aerospace components is making inspections using Fluorescent Penetrant Inspection (FPI). This mandatory inspection represents a non-negligible part of the manufacturing and service cost. It is therefore important to make the geometry of the components suitable for inspection i.e. practicing Design...

Product platforms and product family design have been recognized as successful methods to enable masscustomization strategies. However, companies working with products where pre-defined product variants are not feasible require a more generic platform with re-usable components as well as engineering resources. Extended CAD-models is an approach whe...

System suppliers, e.g. original equipment suppliers, are important for the success of many products. They design a unique solution, often in close collaboration with other companies, based on different product concepts and/or core technologies. The solution can then be manufactured in different quantities depending on the client’s need. High level...

Mass customization and product individualization are driving factors behind design automation, which in turn are enabled through the formalization and automation of engineering work. The goal is to offer customers optimized solutions to their needs timely and as profitable as possible. The path to achieve such a remarkable goal can be very winding...

Companies developing highly customised products are continuously faced with fluctuating requirements during the early and late stages of the product development (PD) process. This differs from companies that develop end-consumer products, which uses fixed specifications and where product platforms have been a successful enabler for efficient custom...

The ability to innovate and launch customized products that are well matched to customer demands is a competitive factor for many manufacturing companies. Development of highly customized products requires following an engineer-to-order business process to tailor the products according to customers’ specifications, which brings more value to the cu...

One way for firms to stay competitive is to adapt a platform approach. In product platforms, modules are used as exchangeable design blocks to create a variety in product performance. This is a proven way to get advantages of scale in production by reusing physical parts and investments in manufacturing. To ensure exchangeability between modules, i...

Product development is an iterative process, partially due to changes in both company internal and external product requirements, resulting in changes to the product under development. These changes might require recapitulation of design rationale and result in re-doing assessments and syntheses of different kinds. One way to support this work is t...

One important part of the manufacturing process of aerospace components is making inspections using Fluorescent Penetrant Inspection (FPI). This mandatory inspection represents a non-negligible part of the manufacturing and service cost. It is therefore important to make the geometry of the components suitable for inspection i.e. practicing Design...

Computer simulations play an important role for evaluating designs in an early stages leading to that more informed decisions can be taken and thereby reducing the risk of costly re-design. In this paper, a platform currently in operation at an aeronautical company for doing extensive automated multi-objective design parameter studies on conceptual...

Computer simulations play an important role for evaluating designs in an early stages leading to that more informed decisions can be taken and thereby reducing the risk of costly re-design. In this paper, a platform currently in operation at an aeronautical company for doing extensive automated multi-objective design parameter studies on conceptual...

For many companies, it is a challenge to balance product variety and cost, i.e. external and internal efficiency. Product platforms has been the dominant solution for a business targeting mass-customization. The main idea is to dived the product into modules that can be shared among different product variants. This has been a success on the consume...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the basic principles and introduction of the Hoshin Kanri (HK) strategic management system, as related to the management practices in manufacturing small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Design/methodology/approach This paper reports the findings from the introduction of HK to four manufacturing...

Companies developing highly customized products within the supplier industry are continuously faced with fluctuating requirements during both the quotation process and continued development. This research proposes a platform approach to aid suppliers when modularity or platform scalability do not suffice. The platform approach, Design Platform, foc...

Developing customized products is the business case for many manufacturing companies striving to fulfill the customers’ specific needs. When manufacturing customized products it is often necessary to also develop corresponding customized manufacturing tooling. There is a need to support concurrent development of new product variants along with thei...