Carl Christian Røstad
email: carl.c.rostad@sintef.no

Bjørnar Henriksen
email: bjornar.henriksen@sintef.no

ECO-Boat MOL Capturing Data from Real Use of the Product

Keywords: Middle of life, leisure boat production, fact-based design

des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

Introduction

Facts and sustainability

Sustainability and social responsibility is increasingly regarded as a prerequisite for manufacturing industries. The implication for manufacturing companies is that products and processes need to be designed so that they have the most positive impact on the environment along the lifecycle including all the phases, Beginning of Life (BOL), Middle of Life (BOL) and End of Life (EOL).

Succeeding in this regard requires large amounts of facts and knowledge that should be used in the design-phase. To a large degree, such facts and knowledge are generated during the Middle of Life (MOL) of the lifecycle, i.e. the phase where products are used and actually meet their "reason d'etre". MOL is also the phase which is normally the basis for manufacturing companies' existence.

If design and process development are not based on facts we have a great risk of setting the wrong quality criteria and performance requirements. In such a situation we risk to create and design products that do not meet the real customer requirements. We also risk developing inefficient designs and production processes if we solely use experience or beliefs instead of facts.

To avoid risks of products not meeting the promised and expected quality requirements, e.g resulting in claims or rework, the producer will often define higher quality standards than required from their products' actual use by their customer. This is an important source for over-processing and waste in the production. Reducing overprocessing could not only have important impact on company costs, but at an aggregated level this is also an important issue in our common efforts for a more sustainable production. On the other hand, if companies based on a lack of facts make products that do not meet the real customer requirements; they might meet serious problems from e.g. claims, accidents, rework, and reputation.

SME's and knowledge creation

First defined by the Brundtland Commission in 1987 [START_REF] Brundtland | Our common future[END_REF], a typical definition of sustainable manufacturing is [2]: "the creation of manufactured products that use processes that minimize negative environmental impacts, conserve energy and natural resources, are safe for employees, communities, and consumers and are economically sound".

We are not familiar with research proving that small scale production or SME's have e.g. a more negative social impact or negative impact on the environment. Depending on manufacturing context, strategies etc., we also often see SME's producing as resource efficient as larger manufacturing companies. However, there are certain challenges for smaller companies and companies that are not volume oriented. One such challenge is related to knowledge creation and knowledge transfer. Obviously these problems are often linked to resources and capabilities available in the companies.

Capturing and making use of these data requires not only systems and hardware solutions, but also the design of processes to make use of these kinds of data in design and production. This could be very challenging for example in low-volume production and where production processes are not standardized. These characteristics we often find in craft-manufacturing and extreme customization. The leisure boat industry is an example containing many of these characteristics.

Scope -fact-based design in the leisure boat industry

In the leisure boat industry, the lack of data from how customers actually use their products, results in product-design based on experience (looking backwards), subjective judgments and input from certain customers or key persons. This often results in too high or wrong quality-standards and consequently over-processing. The need for more fact-based design has resulted in a research project (ECO-boat MOL) aiming to change this situation radically.

The aim of this paper is to describe the challenges for leisure boat producers in design and production and how the R&D project ECO-boat MOL is approaching the need for more fact-based design through data collection.

The composition of the paper is as follows. Section 2 presents some theoretical perspectives related to knowledge creation in a SME-context. Section 3 presents the project ECO-boat MOL and the cases studied. Section 4 is a discussion of possible solutions to the challenges related to fact-based design and process-development aiming to improve product-development and consequently reduce over-processing. Section 5 summarizes preliminary findings and conclusions.

Case-study as research approach

The paper is based on case-studies from the research project ECO-boat MOL. The project has four industrial partners, three Norwegian boat builders and one supplier.

There are also three Norwegian R&D partners (SINTEF, University of Agder and INVENTAS). The project is co-financed by The Norwegian Research Council.

The project started in August 2011 and the activities so far have been studies for identification of knowledge requirements and how MOL-data could improve business performance. Detailed SWOT analysis in the different case companies have been an important part of these studies. The workshops have been prepared and monitored by the researchers, aiming to create hypothesis and ideas of possible solutions for the companies.

Case-studies lend themselves to both generating and testing hypotheses [START_REF] Flyvbjerg | Five Misunderstandings about case study research[END_REF]. Yin [4,p.1] defines the scope of a case study as "an empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context, especially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident". The research project ECOboat MOL aims both to generate hypothesis and testing them through concrete solutions both for data collection and process development in design and production.

However the research at this stage of the project and the results presented in this paper are mainly concerned with generating hypotheses.

Theoretical perspectives -sustainable manufacturing based on facts

Sustainability

Many manufacturing companies have been 'forced' to think social responsibility and sustainability through regulations, new standards or public pressure towards greener products. However, many companies have also approached sustainable manufacturing using a more visionary and proactive approach with the belief that their actions on these issues will make a difference. Industries have traditionally addressed pollution concerns at the point of discharge but this end-of-pipe approach is often costly and ineffective. Thus, industry has increasingly adopted cleaner production by reducing the amount of resources and energy used in the production process, and a focus on environmental friendly energy sources and materials. Allwood [START_REF] Allwood | What is sustainable manufacturing? Sustainable Manufacturing Seminar Series[END_REF] focuses on the relation between the "ecosphere" and "anthroposphere" where sustainable manufacturing is about developing capabilities to transform materials without emission of greenhouse gases, use of non-renewable or toxic materials or the generation of waste.

One of the challenges in making strategic decisions will be to make tradeoffs between economic vitality, environmental protection, and social progress (i.e. sustainability).

Decisions about processes and products will obviously have consequences for social progress and environmental protection. Choosing a manufacturing process that could damage the environment would violate the philosophy of sustainable manufacturing, even if it strictly from the company perspective could be the most efficient. In the same way supply chain decisions would be different when the supply chain partners' attitudes impacts on the environment are also brought to the table.

This also implies that many companies now are considering the environmental impact throughout the product's lifecycle and are integrating environmental strategies and practices into their own management systems. This means that sustainable manufacturing should be seen in a life cycle perspective covering all three aspects and all three elements: social, environmental and economic. This view on sustainable manufacturing requires a lot of efforts and collaboration with a wide range of actors and a strategic basis for manufacturing decisions.

As the focus and perspectives in manufacturing have developed over time, the changes have often been described as shifts in paradigms, "a set of beliefs that guide action" [START_REF] Denzin | Introduction: Entering the field of qualitative research[END_REF]. These paradigms are not absolute in terms of complete frameworks for how to conduct business or organize manufacturing. What they represent are more coherent sets of principles and methods that inspire and guide manufacturing systems design. Paradigms can be useful schemes for identifying knowledge aspects when they are described through a coherent set of criteria. A scheme by Jovane et al. [START_REF] Jovane | A present and future of flexible automation: towards new paradigms[END_REF] represents a useful framework for capturing knowledge aspects especially related to innovations, what kind of knowledge is relevant, and where to find it. In Table 1 [8] some additional criteria are presented to further elucidate knowledge aspects. Sustainable manufacturing could be seen as a manufacturing paradigm itself, and as a logic development from previous paradigms illustrated in Table 1 [START_REF] Henriksen | Knowledge and manufacturing strategy -How different manufacturing paradigms have different requirements to knowledge. Examples from the automotive industry[END_REF], but it could also be seen as containing elements of other paradigms such as lean manufacturing.

Table 1. Manufacturing paradigms and knowledge [START_REF] Henriksen | Knowledge and manufacturing strategy -How different manufacturing paradigms have different requirements to knowledge. Examples from the automotive industry[END_REF] Lean manufacturing [START_REF] Womack | The Machine That Changed the World[END_REF], and its' focus on waste reduction, are often associated with the eco-efficiency aspects. Over-processing is one of the seven wastes (or Mudas [START_REF] Ohno | Toyota production system: Beyond large-scale production[END_REF]) of lean manufacturing and means adding more value to a product than the customer actually requires (such as painting areas that will never be seen or be exposed to corrosion). Over-processing is perhaps the hardest waste to see and understand [START_REF] Pereira | Skill builder -The Seven Wastes[END_REF]. Over-processing is also closely related to quality management, setting the right quality criteria and values (standards).

When focusing on economic aspects of sustainable manufacturing we see that several of the above paradigms could be relevant. This requires that the manufacturing principles are focused on resource efficiency and also where the environmental and social aspects of manufacturing become the premises for strategic, tactical and operational decisions. The point is that what is the most eco-efficient way to manufacture depends on the manufacturing context [START_REF] Henriksen | The knowledge dimension of manufacturing strategy: Mother plantsatellite manufacturing[END_REF].

The knowledge dimension

Knowledge has to come from somewhere -or could it just appear from someone or something that 'suddenly sees the light'? This could easily turn out to be a question of existential or religious nature, which is not our focus. In this paper we will see knowledge creation as the process of coupling and sharing knowledge into a bigger whole. Thus the definition by Nonaka and Krogh [START_REF] Nonaka | Tacit Knowledge and Knowledge Conversion: Controversy and Advancement in Organizational Knowledge Creation Theory[END_REF] of organizational knowledge creation appeals to us: Organizational knowledge creation is the process of making available and amplifying knowledge created by individuals as well as crystallizing and connecting it to an organization's knowledge system.

Knowledge transfer/use includes the movement of knowledge from its point of generation or codified form to the point of use. One of the reasons that knowledge is such a difficult concept is because this process is systemic and often discontinuous. Many knowledge cycles are concurrently occurring in businesses. These cycles feed on each other. The interaction of tacit and explicit knowledge is an important dimension in these cycles and described through the knowledge conversion cycle of Nonaka and Takeuchi [START_REF] Nonaka | The knowledge creating company[END_REF]. How these cycles are or should be working depends on the manufacturing context which is also reflected in the manufacturing paradigm that defines how things are done in a company. Thus, from Table 1 we understand that the challenges related to knowledge differ significantly between craft manufacturing and for example lean manufacturing.

User experience and product development

There is a common view that companies need to focus on customers and their needs in innovations and product development. However, the various mechanisms and principles, and barriers for capturing customer needs have not been fully investigated [START_REF] Raasch | The Dynamics of User Innovation: Drivers and Impediments of Innovation Activities[END_REF]. Ulwick [START_REF] Ulwick | What Customers Want: Using Outcome-Driven Innovation to Create Breakthrough Products and Services[END_REF] found previous innovation practices were ineffective because they were incomplete, overlapping, or unnecessary and argued for "outcome innovation techniques". These techniques links a company's value creation activities to customerdefined metrics. That customers are not necessarily able to express their "real" needs is important for the knowledge creation process for new or improved products.

The challenge of getting MOL-knowledge

Craft manufacturing is often associated with SME's for example within boatbuilding, while lean manufacturing is often associated with larger companies in for example the automotive sector. Even if the quality is usually very high in craft manufacturing, procedures and standards are often based on experience and are not very explicit. The challenge will often be to capture and use facts, more objective data, for use in product design and process development. Lean manufacturing, on the other hand, is much more fact-oriented and many tools have been developed for use in e.g. continuous improvement and process development.

Knowledge, as a basis for reducing over-processing and ensuring eco-efficiency, is a challenge in most industries and not only for SMEs or in craft manufacturing. This is due to the difficulties to gain knowledge of what are the real quality criteria according to the real use of the products, i.e. Middle of life (MOL) knowledge. The challenge is normally more obvious for SME's as they often have fewer resources to capture and make use of the data. However, SMEs like craft-manufacturers often have an advantage in that they work closely with customers and in that way gain much tacit MOL knowledge. What these companies need is more accurate and explicit data.

The ECO-boat MOL project

Project background

The Norwegian leisure boat industry has through the development program "Arena Leisure Boat" initiated several large projects aiming to improve the standard when it comes to sustainability. One project have focused on recycling while another project has focused on design for manufacturing through modularization, reuse of modules and increased efficiency. To further complete the picture, key actors in the Norwegian leisure boat industry initiated a project focusing on MOL to get better knowledge about the real use of the leisure boats. The driving force was that facts, and not only experience, vague descriptions, or wishes from market surveys etc, were needed for designing the right products and processes. Facts from how boats actually are used were considered a key-element in boat design for setting the right quality criteria and standards in order to reduce over-processing and create more sustainable products. The four year, 7 million Euro, ECO-boat MOL-project was established with financial support from the Norwegian Research Council in 2011.

The participants and link to ongoing research

Three leading Norwegian boat builders in their respective segments are representing the industry together with a key supplier. Each company has one main case-focus, but participates in the development and progress of the other cases so that the four casestudies together will constitute a whole:

 Marex (project manager) produces boats 21-37 feet in several categories and applications, but mainly larger leisure boats for international and national markets. The Marex case-study is focused on automatic data capture from the boat itself and involves testing sensors and transfer-protocols and structuring of data from the boat itself and how this data can be used in design choices connected to e.g. dimensions and strengths.  Viknes produce boats for rough conditions at 25-35 feet for international and national markets in the lower and middle speed ranges. The Viknes case-study focuses on capturing data from service-shops, marinas etc and how this data can structured and handled with regards to design solutions and quality standards and requirements. This case also includes the aspects of how to get e.g. service-shops and marinas to cooperate and share service information with the boat-builder and how both the boat-builder and service-shops can create win-win situations.  Sandvik is a producer that develops boats based on optimized electric propulsion system and environmentally friendly solutions. The Sandvik case study is focused on the development of a new green boat and on how customer and market-data can be used as basis for design concept choices. This includes developing new tools and methods for gathering such data and utilize them in the design-processes.  ERTEC is as a producer of wind-screens, doors, windows, tanks, etc. to most boat manufacturers in Northern Europe and is a key player in the value chains of Nor-wegian boat producers. The main focus of the Ertec case is on how to develop resource-efficient and environmentally friendly production processes in the boatbuilding value-chain. To succeed in a sustainable and social responsibility view, the need to bring in the whole value-chain is paramount. SINTEF (Trondheim), University of Agder (Grimstad) and Inventas (Kristiansand) are the Norwegian research and development partners in the project. The project is also linked to an Euro-SME project named BOMA where also other European boat builders and research partners contribute to the research fields.

Hypotheses

ECO-boat MOL has potentially a very high commercial value as the companies will experience radical innovations in knowledge management that will result in new design-/development processes, products, and -production processes. The effect will be products that better meet the real customer requirements and applications. While this may require new and higher quality requirements the main effect is a large reduction in the processing, hence increased resource-efficiency in the production and supply chain. The hypotheses for the effect of the project ECO-boat MOL are the following:

 Improved design processes through better, more formalized and fact-based knowledge in design and development. Theses process can be completed in a much more targeted and effective manner. New systems and principles for the collection and use of facts will contribute to a reduction in resources spent of about 20%, 1,800 hours annually for the boat builder. The same effect applies to the supplier.  More resource efficient production -reduced material costs. Boat builders are expected to achieve a gain of at least 30% reduction in production costs for some models. This is the resource efficiency from the boats being manufactured according to specific quality criteria with more optimal molding and structural performance for how they are actually used. This will, in addition to the clear requirements for furnishings, equipment level, finish etc, reduce material costs.  More resource efficient production process -time and energy costs. The companies will to a larger extent be able to standardize and optimize work processes in accordance with clearly defined quality requirements. The processing is reduced with respect to hourly costs and energy consumption. The effect of a more resourceefficient production process provides an estimated cost-saving of 20-30%.

An important part of the project is the development of a "green boat". In this business case the work is broad in terms of capturing the most environmentally optimal product solutions. This entails the hybrid propulsion system, hull-effective solutions, materials, etc. In such a strategy, the fact-based knowledge and methodology developed by ECO-boat MOL will be fundamental. This business case will, in addition to contributions to environmental improvement as a result of the project, have very large potential gains in resource efficiency, helping to strengthen the boat manufacturer's environmental reputation internationally and thus have a market power in an increasingly environmentally focused market for leisure boats.

Challenges and solutions

Basic questions identified and discussed at an early stage

The research is largely focused on how, and to what extent, one can make experiencebased knowledge more explicit and factual. The challenges are particularly great for craft-based industries, such as boat manufacturing. This is a question about to what extent one can formalize spread, or experience-based knowledge, and make it available in corporate environments. What are the conditions for customers, workshops and others with knowledge of the boat-usage, to be willing to contribute to knowledge sharing? Presuming that the knowledge and data are available there is no assurance that those who have relevant knowledge can or even will share it. As an illustration, consider a service workshop having important knowledge about how a boat is actually used and its actual capabilities and what service(s) are carried out. Why should they spend time and resources to share this knowledge? To some extent theses type of companies get their income as a result of deficiencies in the design.

Far more important, however, are challenges associated with finding resourceefficient methods to acquire the knowledge from the source / knowledge carrier, structure and then transfer it to the boat manufacturer. Similarly, there are challenges in developing the design and manufacturing processes that make use of the MOLknowledge in an efficient manner for these kinds of SME's. Business opportunities, but also key research challenges in the ECO-boat MOL project, that has been identified in the case-studies:

 How can leisure boat concepts be developed according to criteria that are sufficiently generic for different global markets.  How can data of good quality be efficiently acquired in craft manufacturing. This includes new applications and a further development of "the PROMISE" technologies [17], but also how to develop plain (accepted), but good enough, solutions for reporting data from after-sales.  Process development for definitions of MOL data requirements, analysis and use of data in product design and sustainable production processes.  Use of the leisure boats under extreme conditions must still be possible and safe.

How could this be possible when the boats are designed for a more moderate "average" use. Hence, structural aspects and material technology are important issues.

These research questions have been discussed further with the companies to see how relevant they are for each of them and a roadmap of activities and milestones have been set up to meet these challenges in the project.

The initial analyses

One of the main activities so far in the project has been to define goals and opportunities for each of the companies based on their specific strategic contexts. Resources and capabilities have been described including SWOT analysis. Table 2 shows ex-cerpts from the SWOT-analysis and illustrates how more MOL-facts could improve the strengths of the companies and help them take advantage of opportunities, but also how such facts could reduce weakness and threats in the business environment.

Where could facts be found -the basic model

We understand that there is a great need for more facts to improve design and production processes in the leisure boat industry (and other industries) to reduce a negative environmental impact of over-processing. But where are these MOL-data and how could the companies be able to retrieve and use them? ECO-boat MOL has identified at least three important sources for the MOL-data.: the boat itself (1), those being in contact with the boat in service, maintenance etc (2), and the customers /market (3).

Through sensors ECO-boat MOL will develop solutions and principles for instrumentation and automatic data collection (1). This will be a source for data about, stress, speed, how often a boat is used, under which weather conditions, noise etc. These data are critical data for identifying quality criteria and setting the standards. The second source of facts is marinas (2), maintenance and other after-sales activities following the boat after it has been sold. All these different functions and people that are in touch with the boat have a lot of knowledge about the real use of it and the strengths/weakness of it. Being able to capture and transfer this knowledge in a "simple" but efficient and structured format could be a strong advantage for the boat builders. Customers' expectations and needs have also to be captured as input for product design (3). This kind of information has often been collected by different kinds of surveys, talking to key customers etc. However, the problem has often been that there have been difficulties to capture how the boats actually are going be used. Again, the mapping of people's habits and plans to tell us how the impact will be.

From these three sources, data have to be collected and transferred and stored in a way that is simple enough for SME's and low-tech companies to deal with, but still at a good enough quality to be useful for the boat builders.

A lot of the work in the project will build on established standards within the marine industry and on the results from the EU-funded PROMISE-project [17]. PROMISE developed Product Embedded Information Devices (PEIDs) with various degrees of processing capabilities -from a basic RFID-tag to a PEID based on RFID with sensors and computational and decision support capabilities. Further, the middleware, communication, and the use of product design knowledge management-databases including decision support in order to filter and handle the large amount of data is also based on a further development and adjustment of PROMISE-technologies. As mentioned in section 3.2, ECO-boat MOL is closely linked to the Euro-SME project BOMA. Together these two projects cooperate to develop the base-technologies and software needed to capture, structure, handle, transfer and use data for item 1 and 2 above. With regard to user experiences, the gathered data will be handled the same way as for item 1 and 2. However, the challenge of actually identifying hard facts on what the customers' need, require or wishes will have to be handled on a nation-wide basis. In this regard, the ECO-boat MOL project aims to develop new tools and methods based on actual user experience and results from the boat industry in Norway. Outcome driven innovation techniques and other tools and methods will then be tested, evaluated and implemented for the participating companies in the project.

Conclusion

In this paper we have focused on how reduction in over-processing contributes to sustainability. In the leisure boat industry, as in many other industries, overprocessing is to a large extent a result of lack of facts in product design and development. The hypothesis in the ECO-boat MOL project is that over-processing could be reduced by designing boats based on facts of actual use, i.e. MOL-data.

The ECO-boat MOL project need to develop appropriate solutions for capturing and transferring these data. However, to be able to get the desired effect on reduced overprocessing, serious work has to be done in the companies involved to design processes where facts are actually the basis for the design and production processes. This is a major challenge in these kinds of craft manufacturing companies characterized by learning by doing, where experience and tacit knowledge are premises in design and production.

Table 2 .

 2 Excerpts from analysis of how more facts could impact SWOT

  The project aims to use different technologies for virtual communication to identify different use-concepts.

	Strengths (internal view)	Weakness (internal view)	Opportunities (external view)	Threats (external view)
	Production	Design/ product dev.	Sales/ marketing	Production	Design / product dev.	Sales/ marketing	Production	Design/ product dev.	Sales/ marketing	Production	Design/ product dev.	Sales/ marketing
	Fact-based	Structuring of	2-way	Facts is the	Facts reduces	Facts / data as	Be able to	The sunbridge	Less focus on	Automatic	Dealer logg	Provide facts
	improvement	customer	solutions for	basis for the	risks for	a basis for	capture state	revolutionized	the	data collection	All actions	to regulatory
	and fixed	feedback.	service. Fixed	formalization,	knowledge to	pricing.	of the art	us, but design	environment	from	and issues	bodies,
	format on	More able to	format for	standards and	disappear with		technology	was based on	today than	production -	registered.	government
	proposals.	manage	reporting	modulari-	people	What is	e.g. PLM	subjectivity -	before? The	systems for	Provides a	etc
		information	service	zation		important to		what if they	need for facts	benchmarking	product story
	Facts required	from a wider			Facts is	know about	Facts about	where built on	to describe	with other	as input to	Input to
	for	group of	Getting more	Better	crucial for	the boat?	the total	facts and more	and explain	companies	design and	market/
	verifications	customers	data from the	documented	quality		market in our	structured	environmental	and industries	improvements	industrial
			ERP-system	and available	standards on	Are there	area, as well	market input?	aspects			foresights
	Facts and	Solutions		material facts	structure,	ghosts	as the new			Thorough	Important for
	"experience	where the	Structured e-	reduces errors	attributes,	(repetitive	markets for		Surveys of	market data	product	Broader range
	database" for	customer logs	mail systems,	in molding/	services etc.	problems) we	our boats /		people	help us	development	of customer
	prevention of	events / status	etc. in own	manufacturing		need objective	services		boating,	defining	of the right	facts for
	making the	for boats	service unit		New	information			requests for	"qualifiers"	product today	conceptual-
	same mistake				information	on?			services and	and "order	and tomorrow	ization, etc.
	repeatedly	More facts	A proper		reveals desire				needs will be	winners" in
		reduces time	customer app.		and need for				able to give us	different
		calculations			further. Good,				ideas on	segments
		according to	Accurate		but "scary" as				priority areas..
		ISO and CE.	measurement		it could "eat
		Better basis	tools will		capacity"
		data on new	enable
		materials	identification
			of profitability
			areas and
			dependencies


Urli

S Gendron
email: steeve_gendron@uqar.ca

J Brousseau
email: jean_brousseau@uqar.ca

A Elouafi

B Urli

Design system assessment tool

Keywords: Engineering Design, Design systems, Design practices, Design assessment, Assessment tools

des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

Introduction

In several manufacturing sectors, it is recognized that product design is driven by different motivations [START_REF] Urli | Manufacturiers et exportateurs du Canada et Industrie Canada: L'ÉTAT de la CONCEPTION DE PRODUITS[END_REF] derived from a context that imposes adaptations and innovations [START_REF]Évaluation de la performance des systèmes de conception pour la conduite de l'ingénierie des produits ; prototype logiciel d'aide aux acteurs[END_REF][START_REF] Tarondeau | Stratégie Industrielle[END_REF]. The companies must not only control the quality, the cost and the time to market, but also, their flexibility and responsiveness [START_REF]Évaluation de la performance des systèmes de conception pour la conduite de l'ingénierie des produits ; prototype logiciel d'aide aux acteurs[END_REF]. Within this context, companies must focus their attention on the optimization of their manufacturing processes but also of their design methods [START_REF] Tarondeau | Stratégie Industrielle[END_REF]. Good design practices are key factors of innovation and competitiveness of companies and those that are investing more in design increase their annual sales and gain a better access to new markets [START_REF] Urli | Manufacturiers et exportateurs du Canada et Industrie Canada: L'ÉTAT de la CONCEPTION DE PRODUITS[END_REF][START_REF] Sisodia | Competitive Advantage Through Design[END_REF].

To better understand the current design practices in SMEs, 31 companies located in Eastern Québec have participated in an exploratory study conducted in 2010 [START_REF] Gendron | Development of a Tool for Assessing the Design Process: A step toward the creation of a Design Observatory[END_REF]. With regards to the methods of design, there was a gap between the fact of declaring the use of a structured design process (60% of respondents), while on the other hand, the use of design MTT (27% of respondents). Because a design process benefits from being complemented by MTT, these results seem to indicate that the design process used by a company is not as structured as it could or should be [START_REF] Gendron | Development of a Tool for Assessing the Design Process: A step toward the creation of a Design Observatory[END_REF].

Following this first exploratory research, a new research project was launched, which aims to contribute to the development of a tool for characterizing and evaluating design practices. One of its specific objectives is to develop performance indicators. The proposed study is divided into two stages. The first step, presented in this paper, consists of developing a questionnaire suitable to determine the characteristics of the "design system" of organizations. At the present time, the pilot questionnaire is validated by eight different organizations. When refined, this tool will be used as basic ingredient to conduct the second stage which is a longitudinal study.

The theoretical model of design system and the assessment tool are described in the following sections. In section 2, we more specifically explain the model selected to build the questionnaire, how the descriptors related to the model were determined and what is assessed for each descriptor. In section 3, some graphics show the "design system" of a company and illustrate the usefulness of the questionnaire and how it can be used to identify design deficits. In Section 4, we discuss about the strengths and weaknesses of the assessment tool as well as the improvements to be made as a way to provide the basis for an observatory of design practices.

2

Development of the questionnaire

Choice of a conceptual model

The choice of a conceptual model that captures a wide variety of organisations, activities and projects is necessary to build the assessment tool. A synthesis of certain models of project description [START_REF]Évaluation de la performance des systèmes de conception pour la conduite de l'ingénierie des produits ; prototype logiciel d'aide aux acteurs[END_REF][START_REF] Eder | Integration of theories to assist practice[END_REF][START_REF] Laurikkala | Reducing complexity of modelling in large delivery projects[END_REF][START_REF] Marle | Modèles d'informations et méthodes pour aider à la prise de décision en management de projet[END_REF] shows that to describe the context in which the design process evolves, one must consider three axes: (i) the human dimension, (ii) scientific and technological knowledge, and (iii) the socio-economic and organizational environment [START_REF] Topliceanu | Évaluation de la performance des processus collaboratifs en conception de produits[END_REF]. To take into account the interactions between the axes, it is proposed to consider three intermediate aspects, being: (iv) the product, (v) the process, and (vi) the organization. Figure 1 is adapted from the "design system" model [START_REF]Évaluation de la performance des systèmes de conception pour la conduite de l'ingénierie des produits ; prototype logiciel d'aide aux acteurs[END_REF]. It was used to build the questionnaire. In this model [START_REF] Topliceanu | Évaluation de la performance des processus collaboratifs en conception de produits[END_REF], the internal and external environment axis represents the company and its environment. The human axis is represented by the human resources involved in the project. The techno-scientific knowledge axis corresponds to the knowledge and the technologies already in place in the company. The product aspect is placed between the environmental and knowledge axes because it is the product that demonstrates the knowledge and technology and it is by its product that the company performs on the market. The process aspect is found between the knowledge and human axes because it is by the process (phases and activities) that the design team transforms knowledge into a product with such or such characteristic. The organizational (management) aspect is sited between the environmental and the human axes since at the organizational level, the management of a design project reflects in the allocation of resources and by the institution of an organization adapted to the situation. As the figure shows, the design project is at the center of the "design system" and we can see that axes and aspects are influencing each other.

Determination of design activities

There are many definitions of the design process [START_REF] Deneux | Méthodes et Modèles pour la conception concourante[END_REF]. However, it can be defined as a set of activities implemented (in a sequential and/or parallel manner) using the human and material resources to meet the design objectives and lead to the definition of the product [START_REF]Évaluation de la performance des systèmes de conception pour la conduite de l'ingénierie des produits ; prototype logiciel d'aide aux acteurs[END_REF]. Noting the diversity of ways of representing the design process but also their similarities, we particularly focused the ontology of design activities [START_REF] Sim | Towards an ontology of generic engineering design activities[END_REF]. This ontology has the advantage to define a terminology based on the classification of design activities from generic sources of design [START_REF] Hubka | Principles of engineering design[END_REF][START_REF] Pahl | Engineering Design: A Systematic Approach[END_REF][START_REF] Pugh | Total design, integrated methods for successful product engineering[END_REF][START_REF] Suh | The principles of design[END_REF][START_REF] Ullman | The Mechanical Design Process[END_REF][START_REF] Ulrich | Product design and development[END_REF]. Thus, most of the variables assessed by questionnaire emerged from this synthesis.

The first column of Table 1 shows the activities defined by the ontology while the second column shows the questionnaire items formulated from the first column. The items were formulated either by the association of related activities that were considered to be difficult to differentiate or by subdividing the activities considered to be too abstract. For example, in questionnaire items, "generating solutions" is generic, and it makes no distinction between "abstracting", "associating" and "composing" that are activities closely linked to "generating" [START_REF] Sim | Towards an ontology of generic engineering design activities[END_REF]. As another example, in order to help respondent understand the items, Table 1 shows the "decomposing" activity for which two items were formulated ("decomposition of the problem" and "creating a taxonomy") according to the activity's description [START_REF] Sim | Towards an ontology of generic engineering design activities[END_REF]. It should be noted that the presented questionnaire items do not correspond exactly to the questionnaire's statements. To facilitate understanding the questionnaire items, the complete formulations of items include practical examples. Thus, the complete statement of the item "decomposing of problem" is "decomposing of problem (as modules, functions, energies, resources, requirements, etc.)".

Design practice descriptors

The axes and intermediate aspects of the "design system" give the possibility to consider the design practices in a broader perspective instead of considering design only in its process aspect. As several proposed items are derived from the ontology, these are adapted to the model. Thus, the activities coming from the ontology are assigned to the process, the management and techno-scientific aspects.

The descriptors referring to the notion of exploring and understanding the problem are attributed to the process aspect. These activities lead to an increasingly clearer definition of the evolving design until all the details required for production have been obtained [START_REF] Sim | Towards an ontology of generic engineering design activities[END_REF]. Note that this categorization is not intended to restrict the design process to the definition activities and that other descriptors inspired by the ontology can be integrated to the design process although these characterize other dimensions of the model. The evaluation activities are assigned to the techno-scientific axis. These descriptors seek to analyse and evaluate potential design solutions and require specialized knowledge in order to select the applicable solutions [START_REF] Sim | Towards an ontology of generic engineering design activities[END_REF]. The management activities become management descriptors and it was added two descriptors to this dimension ("concurrent engineering" and "Product Data Management (PDM)") in order to take into account the work flow and data management [START_REF] Urli | Manufacturiers et exportateurs du Canada et Industrie Canada: L'ÉTAT de la CONCEPTION DE PRODUITS[END_REF]. Some other descriptors were added, in particular for the product aspect and the environmental and human axes. These dimensions include descriptors such as methods (product aspect) and motives (environmental axe) to identify approaches or special orientations of the "design system".

The axes and intermediate aspects and linked variables are illustrated in table 2. The Product aspect includes various types of Design for X. These descriptors are oriented to maximize the requirements while reducing costs [START_REF] Huang | Design for X : concurrent engineering imperatives[END_REF]. The use of DFX gives pertinent information regarding the characteristics of the developed products as well as the orientation of the design to meet market expectations. Descriptors of environmental axis relate to the motives underlying design projects. For North American companies, the main drivers of investing in design are the evolution of the client's preferences and shrinking of delays in marketing, but one might also mention the increase in capacity and performance of products and technology [START_REF] Urli | Manufacturiers et exportateurs du Canada et Industrie Canada: L'ÉTAT de la CONCEPTION DE PRODUITS[END_REF]. Descriptors of human axis include the design team organization (multidisciplinary team), its composition (design team recruitment according to skills and expertise, personality types), the arrangements put in place to promote collaborative work and those set up to ensure the motivation of individuals involved in the design project [START_REF] Wittorski | Analyse du travail et production de compétences collectives[END_REF].

Table 2. Dimensions and descriptors

Human axis Environnement axis

Issues for descriptors

Each descriptor is assessed by four questions that correspond to four perspectives (facets). For each facet, the evaluation is based on ordered response scales.

The first facet is related to the use of the descriptor in the company's design practices. This facet called Frequency can specify the "design system" of a company. It has to be noted that this facet is also called Project motives into the environmental dimension. Concerning the Frequency of use and Project motives, the choice of answers is: (0) never, (1) rarely, (2) sometimes, (3) often, and (4) always.

It is essential to know which descriptors are relevant for a company. For this reason, it is asked to evaluate their importance regarding to the project success. For this facet, called Importance for success, the choice of answers is: (0) no significant, (1) a bit important, (2) important, (3) very important, and (4) essential.

The third issue is the company's performance on the descriptors. This is required because a practice can be considered very important as the performance level must be improved. For this facet called Performance, the choice of answer is: (0) does not applied, (1) bad, (2) weak, (3) good, and (4) very good.

Because design activities can be assigned or delegated to external partners while internal expertises may remain essential, the fourth facet evaluates the partners' involvement for each descriptor. For Outsourcing and Partnership the answers choice is similar to that of Importance for success: (0) no significant, (1) a bit important, (2) important, (3) very important, and (4) essential.

Results

The results presented here relate to those obtained from a manufacturing company operating in the sector of metallic structures. This company was chosen to illustrate the results because it has revealed to use most of the descriptors identified in the survey.

Figure 2 shows the overall positioning of the company on the axes and aspects of the "design system". These results are obtained by averaging the scores assigned to the descriptors of each dimension. Averages are only calculated for the descriptors considered significant to the question assessing Importance for success because usually it was no answers to the other facets when Importance was not significant. According to the evaluator's perception, the positioning on the "design system" shows that this company performs quite well overall except for the human dimension where the Performance curve is clearly below the Importance for success curve. Figure 2 also shows that descriptors are used less frequently in the human dimension. Finally, management aspect, environmental axis and process aspect represent those where certain descriptors are outsourced or delegated to partners.

Figures 3, 4 and5 show in details the descriptors assessment of each dimension. In these graphs, the numbers correspond to the descriptors listed in Table 2. The graphs mainly show curves of Performance and of Importance for success.

Fig. 3. Positioning on Human axis and Management aspect

For the human dimension, with scores of 4.0, "skills and expertise" and "promoting collaboration" are the most important descriptors in a design project context. The descriptors "multidisciplinary team", "personality types", "promoting motivation" with scores of 2.0 are considered less important. The largest differences between the curves of Performance and of Importance for success represent the "promoting collaboration" and "multidisciplinary team" descriptors. Regarding the Frequency of use, it is found that the design team is never chosen on the basis of "personality types" and "promoting motivation" is never considered. These results are surprising since both descriptors were considered Important to a degree 2.

With increasing design performance as an objective, performance deficits are highlighted by the graphs. These concerns are brought out by the differences found between Performance and Importance for success. The idea here is that for a descriptor with a certain score of Importance (as essential = 4), a score at least equivalent should match at Performance (in this case, very good = 4). If not, it's assumed that the descriptor does not optimally contribute to the success. For two descriptors for which the difference found between Performance and Importance remains the same, priority actions should be taken on the descriptor with the highest Importance score. Following this logic, the first concern in human dimension is to increase performance on "promoting collaboration", the second concern is to increase performance on "multidisciplinary team", the third concern is to increase performance level on "skills and expertise" and the latest is on "promoting motivation". Concerning the management dimension, only the "PDM" descriptor is not considered significant. The curve of outsourcing shows that "exploring solutions with the customer", "technology watch" and "external research" are outsourced. The curve of Performance surrounds the curve of Importance for success. This pattern suggests a good command of the practice in this dimension. There is a negative gap between Performance and Importance for "feasibility study" and "exploring solutions with the customer". Concern on "exploring solutions with the customer" should be prioritized while a lower priority concern relates to "feasibility study".

Figure 4 shows the results for the Environmental axis and the Product aspect.

Fig. 4. Positioning on Environmental axis and Product aspect

It appears that for the environmental axis, the single highlight concerns "time to market". Regarding the product aspect, "design for serviceability" and "design for testability" are excluded and a concern to increase performance on "design for assembling" emerges.

Figure 5 shows the results for Techno-Scientific axis and Process aspect. For techno-scientific axis, only "rapid prototyping" is not considered significant.

Increasing the performance for "simulating" is the single concern for this dimension. Regarding the process aspect, "creating a nomenclature" and "benchmarking" are rejected. To increase the performance level, the priority concern should be on "final report" while a second concern targets "solutions generation".

Discussion

A promising tool

The results show that almost all descriptors were considered relevant by the company' evaluator and those performance deficits can be highlighted whenever the Performance curve lies below Importance for success curve. By acting wisely on targets, a company should meet its objectives more easily and increase chance to success in its design projects. However the prioritization of actions must be nuanced.

It belongs to a company to define why it gets its results and to determine its future actions. It is possible that the measures taken to improve performance within a descriptor increase performance on other descriptors. As such, Figure 1 shows the influences between the dimensions of the "design system", indicating that the descriptors are not totally independent. Furthermore, it is important to note that the tool is based on the evaluator's perception. It could be that diagnosis differs within the same firm depending on who is conducting the evaluation and that an accurate evaluation must consider the views of several actors. The fact that respondents might differ in their evaluation of descriptors may be symptomatic of some problems and may impact on the conduct of company projects.

Companies that participated in the survey validation were not compared. However, the second phase of the research will carry a descriptive and relational mandate. Data collected from a large sample should allow, among others, the identification of the most contributing practices to the success for categories of companies, to establish portraits by sector and to compare the pattern of a company with those of its sector. Finally, we believe that although more improvements are needed, the questionnaire can be used in developing comparative performance indicators.

4.2

The improvement of the questionnaire

The respondents suggested potential improvements to the survey. Following their comments, the answer option (does not applied) will be added to the questionnaire for all matters relating to the Outsourcing and Partnership and Importance for success.

Considering the numerous variables to assess, to mitigate the confusion effect that may occur when responding to a 45-minutes questionnaire, a new version will be put together to allow answering in several stages. Finally, the ordered answer scales will be show with their corresponding number.

Conclusion

The results presented show that most descriptors were considered by the companies. These variables are suitable to represent the "design system" and can help in developing indicators. For a company, the highlights on descriptors that could be improved may help to target actions and raise global performance. According to respondent's comments, the questionnaire will be improve before it is used for a longitudinal research entrusted to an observatory whose mandate will be to measure and monitor the evolution of design practices in organizations.

Fig. 1 .

 1 Fig. 1. Design System (adapted from Robin V.[2])

Fig. 2 .

 2 Fig. 2. Positioning on Design System

Fig. 5 .

 5 Fig. 5. Positioning on Techno-Scientific axis and Process aspect

Table 1 .

 1 Ontology activities and Questionnaire items

	Ontology activities	Questionnaire items	Ontology activities	Questionnaire items
	Design definition activities	Design management activities
	Abstracting
	Associating Composing	Solutions generation	Constraining Identifying	Feasibility study
	Generating
	Decomposing	Decomposition of the problem Creating a nomenclature	Exploring	Exploring solutions with the client
	Defining	Define specifications	Information gathering	Technology watch
	Detailing	Documentation for manufacturing	Planning	Task planning Resource planning
	Standardising[	Standardization	Prioritising	Objectives prioritization
	Structuring/integrating	Choice of architecture Benchmarking	Resolving	Detecting and resolving conflicts
	Synthesizing	Final report	Scheduling	Scheduling and monitoring
	Design evaluation activities	Selecting	Use of decision criteria
	Analysing	Analyzing	Searching	Internal search External search
	Decision making Selecting	Solutions selection
	Evaluating	Performances estimation
		CAD
	Modelling	Rapid prototyping
		CAM
	Simulating	Simulating
	Testing/experimenting	Making partial prototype Making complete prototype


Ana Milicic

Apostolos Perdikakis

Soumaya El Kadiri

Dimitris Kiritsis

Petko Ivanov
email: p.ivanov@sap.com

Towards the Definition of Domain Concepts and Knowledge through the Application of the User Story Mapping Method

Keywords: Knowledge representation and definition, PLM, Bottom-Up approach, User Story Mapping Method

The context and problem of identifying and thereafter representing, analyzing and managing information and knowledge about an organization has always been very crucial to achieve business goals in an efficient and flexible way. Particularly in a PLM context, the issue of information overload is growing in importance. An emergent challenge consists in providing a contextdriven access to federated information and knowledge and fostering crossdiscipline collaborations between actors to improve quality in product development. This paper highlights key issues for knowledge definition and representation. We propose a bottom-up approach based on the User Story Mapping method (USM). This method is user-centric and leads to the definition of current and/or expected scenarios and processes along with a collaboratively agreed vision. Common concepts and viewpoints are therefore derived and generalized through a process of merging defined roles, activities and usages sequences with a focus on the product content. This bottom-up approach provides a federated and common understanding of information throughout the industrial product and process lifecycle; which combined with appropriate tools and methods, such as questionnaires, standards specifications, knowledge based approaches, etc. results in the definition of the knowledge network and domain and therefore improves capabilities for sharing and reusing this knowledge in collaborative product development. The proposed approach is applied in the context of the FP7 European project LinkedDesign (Linked Knowledge in Manufacturing, Engineering and Design for Next-Generation Production) based on three application scenarios.

Introduction

Innovation is the application of knowledge to produce new knowledge [START_REF] Drucker | Post-capitalist society[END_REF]. It requires systematic efforts and a high degree of organization. As we enter the knowledge society, ownership of knowledge and information as a source of competitive advantage is becoming increasingly important. In other words, organizations depend more on the development, use and distribution of knowledge based competencies. This is particularly relevant in knowledge intensive processes such as product innovation. Consequently, research and development (R&D) organizations are paying more attention to the concept of managing their knowledge base in order to increase competitive advantage, through effective decision making and innovation [START_REF] Nonaka | The knowledge creating company[END_REF][3] [START_REF] Sveiby | The new organizational wealth: Managing & measuring knowledge-based assets[END_REF]. Knowledge is a key resource that must be managed if improvement efforts are to succeed and businesses are to remain competitive in a networked environment [START_REF] Gunasekaran | Agile manufacturing: a framework for research and development[END_REF]. In particular, the two major challenges that face organizations are: (a) ensuring that they have the knowledge to support their operations and (b) ensuring that they optimize the knowledge resources available to them. Managing knowledge is about creating an environment that fosters the continuous creation, aggregation, use and reuse of both organizational and personal knowledge in the pursuit of new business value. Knowledge management can be considered to be a systematic and organized attempt to use knowledge within a company to transform its ability to generate, store and use knowledge in order to improve performance. In short, the overriding purpose of enterprise knowledge management is to make knowledge accessible and reusable to the organization.

Capturing domain specific knowledge is one of the main challenges in the field of Knowledge Based Engineering (KBE) [START_REF] Sriram | Artificial intelligence in engineering: Personal reflections[END_REF]. Several methodologies have been elaborated to guide knowledge acquisition activities and thus avoid omitting essential knowledge [START_REF] Skarka | Application of MOKA methodology in generative model creation using CATIA[END_REF] but they usually require a time-consuming collection and analysis of (often implicit) knowledge about the product and its design process, respectively [START_REF] Van Der Velden | An intelligent system for automatic layout routing in aerospace design[END_REF]. Thus, most approaches to designing KBE-Tools address especially repetitive engineering tasks [START_REF] Colombo | Towards the design of intelligent CAD systems: An ontological approach[END_REF][10], since the potential to reduce time and cost by means of such approaches has to be balanced against the effort needed to gather and formalize the required knowledge in a scheme (e.g. an ontology) [START_REF] Franke | Ontological semantics of standards and plm repositories in the product development phase[END_REF] [START_REF] Nonaka | The knowledge-creating company: How Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation[END_REF]. The User Story Mapping method comes to address the previously stated challenges by providing an efficient, time saving, bottom up requirements analysis for the design of KBE-Tools. It is a user centric method which allows the designers of the software to learn what the future users expect from this KBE-Tool, as well as it helps the users to express their over-all demands in functional view which is close to them.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Section 2 discusses knowledge definition and representation issues; Section 3 presents the USM method and the proposed approach and; Section 5 concludes the research findings.

Knowledge definition and representation

Knowledge is an elusive concept and therefore it is important to define it in context in order to understand it. The term is used in several different ways in the literature. For example, Nonaka and Takuechi in [START_REF] Wilson | Managing knowledge[END_REF], two of the early researchers in this field, adopt a philosophical angle and define knowledge as "justified true belief". In this view, knowledge is an opinion, idea or theory that has been verified empirically and agreed upon by a community. According to Wilson in [START_REF] Quinn | Managing professional intellect: making the most of the best[END_REF], knowledge at the most basic level is "that which is known". Quinn et al in [START_REF] Stewart | Intellectual Capital: The New Wealth of Organizations[END_REF] liken knowledge with professional intellect where professional intellect in organizations centers on knowwhat, know-why, know-how and self-motivated creativity. Stewart in [START_REF] Bohn | Measuring and managing technological knowledge[END_REF] also considers knowledge in terms of intellectual capital. On the other hand, Bohn in [START_REF] Davenport | Working knowledge: How organizations manage what they know[END_REF] examines knowledge in terms of a company's processes. He believes that an organization's knowledge about its processes may range from total ignorance about how they work to very complex and formal mathematical models. According to Davenport et al in [START_REF] Wiig | Knowledge management: where did it come from and where will it go?[END_REF], knowledge is information combined with experience, context, interpretation and reflection. It is a high value form of information that is ready to apply to decisions and actions. Simply put, knowledge can be defined as the integration of ideas, experience, intuition, assertions, skills and lessons learned that have the potential to create value for a business by informing decisions and improving performance. In this view, knowledge is a key enabler to organizational success. However, in order for knowledge to be useful it must be available, accurate, effective and accessible.

Question of knowledge representation first emerged in the field of artificial intelligence, where the experts were working on representing the knowledge using predefined set of symbols. Application of knowledge engineering in PLM context required that the format used for representing the knowledge is understandable by both, humans and machines. For this reason, number of methods was developed, including relational diagrams and linked tables but lately, ontologies are shown to be preferable choice. Ontologies proved to be very convenient for organizing and storing the data. They enable automatic reasoning and inference which means that beside the knowledge gathered in the time of modeling the ontology, additional relations will be automatically built up in time.

Specification and conceptualization of ontologies lean on the identification of the relevant concepts of a particular domain, their type, and the constraints on their use. However, existing methodologies (Diligent, Methontholgy, On-To-Knowledge) lack detailed and clear guidelines for building the concepts. On the one hand, the process of concepts definition represents a key issue for knowledge gathering as it has to cover in an optimal way the whole domain. On the other hand, several knowledge resources may exist and their concepts reuse can be of a key importance. The NeOn Methdology [START_REF] Del | NeOn Methodology for Building Ontology Networks: Specification, Scheduling and Reuse[END_REF] comes to deal with the aforementioned issues and provides some methodological guidelines for performing the ontology requirements specification activity, to obtain the requirements that the ontology should fulfill. Particularly, it consists of elaborating an ORSD (Ontology Requirements Specification Document) which aims to list, among others, the intended uses, the end-users and a set of questions describing the requirements that the ontology should fulfill. Nevertheless, this approach of listing intended uses and questions that the ontology should respond to may appear as a flat structure, in the sense that it doesn't lead to study and analyze the domain mainly in terms of interactions that link the end-users and usages, before going in deep into the questions that the concepts should be able to answer. The research conducted in this paper has a focus on the first phase of concepts definition as it represents the main basis for knowledge definition and conceptualization. The following section discusses the proposed approach for dealing with concepts definition based on one of the agile methods, called the User Story Mapping.

A bottom-up approach based on USM

The problem of information overload exists in many different domains. It is usually difficult to find the most suitable way of documenting, describing, and transferring gathered knowledge, be it for software, products, services, etc. In this work we propose the usage of an approach from the agile software development called the User Story Mapping (USM) [START_REF] Patton | It's All In How You Slice It[END_REF].

When a new software product is being developed, one of the first steps of the process is to document the idea. This usually results in a description of key features that the developed product will have, optionally including a short abstract, called the "elevator pitch" that will be used to advertise the product and show its value to the customer. After shortly documenting the idea, the next step is to develop a concrete list of action items or tasks, also called backlog, that need to be implemented in order to transform the idea into a concrete product. Unfortunately, such backlogs, event arranged in a priority order are usually flat structures. They help the team members to understand what needs to be done next, but unfortunately do not explain why it needs to be done and what the whole system or product does. Such approach can be compared with having the puzzle pieces, but not knowing what the whole picture should look like, not knowing what the final goal is. An approach to overcome the problem of how to create a good backlog is the user story mapping. It is not only a way of structuring the backlog items, it is a way of visually documenting ideas, a way of sharing a concrete product vision, functionalities, users that can benefit from the product, and how they use the product. It is a way to communicate not only within and among teams, but also with users and customers.

User Story Mapping Method

A user story map is a user centric approach and organizes the backlog along scenarios and users. It answers the question how a user uses the product and consists of several structure blocks as it can be seen in Figure 1:

 Usage dimension -It describes how a user would use the product. It shows the sequence of steps that a user would perform when using the product. It is very important that usage steps cover the whole scope of the product usage.  User dimension -This dimension defines the types of users that will use the developed product. It helps to identify different users and the aspects of the product that will be interesting for those users.  Backbone -This section describes the activities that a user performs within a usage step. The backbone describes the activities that a user performs when using the developed product. This section is called backbone as it often represents the essentials of the product and suits as a guideline for the definition of the user stories, which are actually a refinement of the backbone.  User stories as backlog items -This is the actual placeholder for the user stories.

The user stories are ordered vertically under each activity and represent a refined version of an activity. It is recommended that user stories follow the pattern "As <user> I want to <feature> so that <value>". After all user stories have been defined, they also need to be prioritized, taking into account the value that this user story brings, the technical risk of implementing it and the effort that will be needed to implement the story.

Although the USM method was originally proposed and used in the area of agile software development, it is a generic method for structuring and sharing information about a product. It visualizes in a simple way several aspects of a product looking from the user perspective. It is both means of communication and means of documenting knowledge in PLM.

A bottom-up approach for the definition of domain concepts

If we consider the USM to be the first step of gathering information regarding the domain of interest than we can create an algorithm for building a complete and structured knowledge base, described in Figure 2:  Step 1: Apply the USM method, based on the business requirements and the project vision.  Step 2: Gather other sources of information (standards, past experience...) in order to collect some generic and specific concepts, with respect to the scope resulted from the application of USM (Step 1).  Step 3: Create an unique list of concepts that covers entire domain based on usages, roles and activities resulted through the application of USM and the generic concepts collected within the previous step.  Step 4: Define relations and dependencies among the list of concepts.  Step 5: Create a dynamic knowledge base covering the domain, expressed in some of the standard formats like relational data base, ontology, semantic model.

Fig. 2. Diagram displaying the creation of knowledge base

Obviously, in this scenario, USM is vital part as it will create a base view of the domain in question. Switching from USM to list of concepts is relatively straightforward step. Functionalities required by user stories are described in form of sets of functional modules and each module is translated into concept of the domain. Next, the list is extended with additional concepts coming from other sources of information like industrial standards or similar projects. Finally, concepts are described using relations and expressed in some of the usual knowledge base formats.

Application to the LinkedDesign Project

USM method gives a great approach on "end user" request specification. In a real-life scenarios, when creating a new software, there is always a dilemma between creating a generic product which can be used by everybody, but doesn't really cover anybody's needs completely or creating a strictly end-user dictated custom product. USM method gives a solution for such problems since it allows a controlled generalization of user requests. This method for request specifications is developed for the scenario where some of the "end users" are already known and the product is developed according to their specifications, but since the controlled generalization of these requirements is done, it is possible and quite straight forward for other future clients to use the software.

LinkedDesign1 is a project of a FP7 framework which strives to create a platform which will store and enable sharing of data, knowledge management and fast and efficient querying for information for all the actors in project lifecycle phases of interest. In LinkedDesign project we are dealing with three industrial partners as usecases whose fields of engagement are greatly diverse but can all benefit from a platform to be designed.

One of the questions that necessarily emerges is to what degree should some product be generic. The more generic it is, the wider is the specter of "end users" that will be able to use it. On the other hand, generic models require more work on implementing them for specific companies. One of the approaches is to gather USMs from all interested users and then merge them into one single USM by generalizing them only to such extend, that the final model is simple enough. For example, when developing a software for different kinds of manufacturing companies, user roles such as "Part designer" and "Designer" coming from two different companies should be merged into one simple role "Design engineer" and both users should be able to identify the connection. In LinkedDesign specifically this example is shown in Figure 3.

In some other cases generalizing is not that simple. For example, if only one of all users wants to have the role "Supplier", it has to be carefully considered should such role be included in the generic model, or should it be taken under "Manufacturing personnel" which everybody requires. The later choice comes as better solution since it will keep our list of generalized roles simple and USM method gives us opportunity to note the work of "Suppliers" through a user story of more generic role. These examples lead us to a conclusion that during this merging process, the most important thing is to have constant communication with all "end users". As long as they are able to recognize all their user stories in these merged, more generic roles, the model is not too generic.

Fig. 3. User roles merging

Same guidelines stand for creating an optimal set of generalized functions, though in this case situation gets a bit more complicated as a consequence of difference in the nature of manufacturing that different clients implement. For example function "Install" can be required by almost all clients but since there is no standardized terminology, "Install" can be used to describe installation of a knowledge base platform, overlooking the manufacturing, or installation of a sensors overlooking the physical machinery. Function "Report" of a project manager is another one that can be expected from all clients but depending on a case, it can be a request to be able to report feedback about product to a manufacturing department for adjusting the protocols or it can be a request to be able to report final statistics to a executives department for a future planning. This would be a problem of using the same word for different actions but also the problem of using different names for one action has to be considered. For example simple data processing can be described as "Analytics" or "Knowledge extraction" depending on a client. The only way to deal with these issues is again to have a continuous communication with all the clients and to make sure that terminology is well defined and understood.

General guidelines on how this process should be conducted are given in Figure 4. Still, it is important to remember that this is a manual procedure and that human perception and creativity are crucial for success.

Fig. 4. Algorithm for USM merging

Another important issue to consider is that all actors have to fully understand what they are being asked for, by this USM method. In other words, they have to be able to describe their demands fully and in a detail manner and to be encouraged to consider all their employees and their activities. Close communication is again answer for this matter, since it will also lead to creating a more synchronized vocabulary and better understanding of terms used to describe different activities. Finally, the best results should be achieved through iterative procedure of merging which is finished when final model is simple enough and it covers all demands for details of different users.

Once the generalized USM map is created (shown in figure 5), the procedure toward creating the LinkedDesign ontology follows the proposed "five step" procedure presented in Section 3.2. Currently, it is in the stage 3 where the list of concepts is being created, some of them are given in the following table.

Top Level Concepts Description

Actor Groups all the personnel involved

Conclusion

Identification and representation of knowledge in a product related domain is still a great challenge. In this paper we propose the USM method for knowledge extraction as well as formal guideline for how to apply this method. On the LinkedDesign usecase we showed that it is convenient and efficient, successful in giving the expected results. The USM method gives us a tool which can directly translate raw data into list of relevant concepts that covers entire functional profile of the software in question and hus it gives us a detail image of the domain this software operates on. It is simple and straight-forward and it enables end-users to express their descriptions of the domain in a common everyday language, rather than using technical terms, which is more probable to lead to gathering of more detailed information. Beside formalization of the information, it is shown to be an excellent tool for generalization of "end-user" requests and a vital step toward the creation of the knowledge base.

Fig. 1 .

 1 Fig. 1. User story map

Fig. 5 .

 5 Fig. 5. The generalized USM

Table 1 .

 1 Top level concepts

	Task	Groups scheduled actions
	Process	Groups all processes
	Product	Groups all the details of a products

http://www.linkeddesign.eu/


Jeremy Boxberger

Mathieu Lebouteiller²

Toufik Boudouh

Samuel Gomes

"Toward an automatic reduction of non-added value tasks in the project-product-process domain"

Keywords: Lean engineering, Iteration, Product lifecycle management, workflow

To increase their competitiveness, companies need to increase the turnover of their products. They should continuously develop attractive new products efficiently in order to increase sales volume and ensure sustainability in globalized markets. The streamlining of routine engineering processes becomes necessary to improve quality and productivity in design and allows more time to develop innovative products. The main goal of our contribution is to develop a design process framework to allow a reduction in routine design processes which will thus increase time available for innovative design processes. The methodology proposed consists of integrating data management, information management, knowledge management, and decision-support methods and tools, such as PDM (product data management), PLM (product lifecycle management), and KBE (Knowledge based engineering). In the area of knowledge management, some methodologies exist to reduce non-added value tasks such as KBE models, Top down design or Design for X (Design for manufacture, Design for assembly, dis-assembly, etc...). Our methodology deals with the reduction of routine design by automatic design project initiation, including knowledge management. This methodology is tested in a firm specialized in rolling shutter components. This approach allows time reduction of "non-added value tasks" and allows justifying any specification by knowledge and know-how gained in the past. When a new design project is created, often it will require one or several manufacturing processes to create the product. So, the designer has to use his own skills and experience to define the task lengths. One issue is how to keep the information usable by every designer, not only the expert. Another issue is how to preserve the knowledge embedded into the product, the manufacturing process and also in the project. Our contribution uses automatic project initiation, stored in a PLM tool. The automatic generation is based on several models which use configuration containing parameters and knowledge. By introducing a tool using this methodology in an industrial firm, we can reduce routine design and improve design robustness. Additional research will be performed towards an ergonomic use of the tool.

Introduction

In a more competitive economic environment, to sustain their business, companies must adapt and change their engineering processes to improve design performance and increase their three main indicators: quality cost and delivery. In order to introduce our work, we will discuss some methods of business organization, then we will see the importance of using software such as Product Data Management (PDM) or Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), then explanations about wasting time and iteration will be introduced. In addition, management planning and resources will now be collaborative in a product-process-project approach. To test the concepts proposed we use a tool for collaborative design within the scope of PLM applied to a small engineering firm. Today, organization varies from company to company because of the size, the sector of activity, the maturity, or the history of the company [1]. Considering now the data management project-product-process throughout the life cycle, the PDM evolves toward PLM [START_REF] Gomes | A MULTI-AGENT SYSTEM EMBEDDED TO A PLM TO SYNTHESIZE AND RE-USE INDUSTRIAL KNOWLEDGE[END_REF], which corresponds to a real business strategy for creating and maintaining the product definition throughout its life cycle, through to the establishment of the product offer until the end of life. Excellent communication between stakeholders of different services of the company fosters the development of concurrent engineering. Unlike engineering, where work is carried out sequentially, concurrent engineering has several advantages. It allows the overlapping of tasks, which in turn allows gains in terms of time and quality. It also improves communication within the project team. This global vision of development emerged in the late 80's under different names such as integrated engineering [3] [4] simultaneous [START_REF] Bocquet J-C | CONCEPTION DE PRODUITS MÉCANIQUES[END_REF], distributed [6], concurrent [START_REF] Sohlenius | CONCURRENT ENGINEERING[END_REF] [8] (concurrent engineering), or collaborative [9] [10]. Moreover, continual improvement is conducted in the design models using lean engineering concepts [START_REF] Wang | LEAGILE" SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT: AN EXPERIENCE REPORT ANALYSIS OF THE APPLICATION OF LEAN APPROACHES IN AGILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT[END_REF]. This consists, just like lean manufacturing, in searching for matching and deleting non value -added tasks. Project creation often creates wasted time, which contains non added value and iterations: Iteration of design tasks is an intrinsic characteristic of the design process. Indeed, design cannot be performed in a single long process. Concurrent engineering is a product development method where iterations occur more significantly between tasks. Tasks are achieved in parallel or overlapped resulting in more interactions, therefore in more iteration. Iterations are needed to improve design quality, to support creativity, and to explore new solutions. Iterations are also often necessary for rework imposed by downstream tasks in the design process. Hence, certain iterations should be planned in order to arrive at a satisfactory design solution, and other iterations are unplanned and stem from either a bad scheduling of design tasks or from design errors. In the perspective of lean engineering, inefficient iterations are considered as waste. In this case, the iterative process is a non-added value activity in the design process and should be minimized. [START_REF] Steward | THE DESIGN STRUCTURE SYSTEM: A METHOD FOR MANAGING THE DESIGN OF COMPLEX SYSTEMS[END_REF] [START_REF] Browning | APPLYING THE DESIGN STRUCTURE MATRIX TO SYSTEM DECOMPOSITION AND INTEGRATION PROBLEMS: A REVIEW AND NEW DIRECTIONS[END_REF]. The objective of our contribution is to integrate within a type of PLM architecture, project management including resource management, resource availability, loading rate, hourly cost of resources and manufacturing processes knowledge in order to have a homogeneous distribution between all the projects with realistic workloads. Our goal is to test these features of traditional project management instead of workflow tools commonly used in PLM-PDM [14] [15] systems while automating the project management tool and reducing routine tasks which allow time saving for the users. [START_REF] Marco Cantamessa | AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF THE PLM IMPLEMENTATION EFFECTS IN THE AEROSPACE INDUSTRY ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE[END_REF]

Methodology

Routine design takes up a huge amount of time in industry. This routine design contains iteration loops: we make a calculation or attempt several times to find the best parameters, the best planning, etc. Our method deals specifically with routine iteration reduction in projects. Checking team users' workloads, checking their availability, etc. is wasted time during project schedule building. Wasted time in the design phase stage is well known now and certain applications are used to reduce routine product design, such as KBE application. But wasted time is also present in the project domain of the design process. The use of a tool for scheduling management and document sharing, coupled with a streamlined design methodology can reduce this wasted time by simplifying the implementation of a project, document archiving, and can improve communication between key contributors (actors). ACSP is an organizational tool developed by the University of Technology of Belfort-Montbéliard for collaborative project management with these features. This tool also provides a software environment for distributed collaborative design [START_REF] Gomes | A MULTI-AGENT SYSTEM EMBEDDED TO A PLM TO SYNTHESIZE AND RE-USE INDUSTRIAL KNOWLEDGE[END_REF], centralizing various data relating to the proposed design of the "product", the "process" and "activities" associated with them. The difference of the tool can be represented in the table below (Table 1) where a cross means that the option is present.

Functionality\Tool ACSP PLM Tool WBS Tool View management x Workflow management x Configuration management
x Functional analysis of product X Functional analysis of process X Specifications management X Bill of materials management X x Knowledge management (parameters and rules)

X Automatic KBE application builder X Access right management X x x Roles management X x Communication / forum X x Planning management X x (Wind-chill) x Project Template management X Resources management X x Workload management X x Financial aspect management X x

Table 1 : Review of available functions in various types of project information management tools

Positioned in the context of concurrent engineering [START_REF] Sohlenius | CONCURRENT ENGINEERING[END_REF], the objective of such a tool is to support the design process in terms of cooperation between key contributors such as design process engineers, technicians, directors, users, operators, manufacturing and so on. The insertion of a special project creation module allows project building tasks such as planning, teamwork and individual workloads, the manufacturing process and the knowledge process to be reduced. The SADT diagrams (Figure 1) illustrate the method baseline.

Figure 1 : ACSP automatic project creation model

The method of creation is composed of several steps. The first is to choose the kind of project (short or long), then the processes involved in the project. As a result, the key people are inserted accordingly into the process. At the end the team project is chosen. This step is the responsibility of the PLM Architect. The next step is the responsibilities of the team leader who can add people and adjust, if necessary, the planning which has been automatically created. He can also check the work load of his team and adjust accordingly. The ultimate goal is to simplify the communication and exchange of documents within the firm. In addition to its goals of sharing and exchange of data inherent in the design, ACSP also aims to generate project summary documents used in the capitalization of project data: functional specifications, developer specifications, product file, and so on. Meanwhile, the ACSP provides scheduling information, facilitating their research. It also allows a better definition of a project (planning, define project team, workloads, etc.), and better visualization of tasks to be performed by each [17] [18]. It is necessary in a project that the actors work together and communicate for a strong cohesion of the work, and a homogeneous and realistic distribution of tasks. In addition to the basic document management function of the PLM, the tool must manage the interchanging of the tasks. Standardization of some project templates, with predefined tasks (according to the different manufacturing processes included in the project), standard task duration, standard documents and intelligent connections between the tasks, allow time to be saved during development of the project plan. The workloads visualization of each actor within the project also allows the construction of a realistic forecast plan, taking into account other projects. Thus, the semi-automatic project, built from standard projects, allows the creation of a new project, including project management, without the use of the traditional tools of workflow.

Use case

In this part we explain how we have reduced the time wasted in non value-added actions in the sub-parts: The first part is the creation of a new project. The software allows the user to select the type of project he wants to create according to the manufacturing process which is included in the project. The different manufacturing processes are plastic injection, sheet metal forming, powder sintering, machining and stamping. The user selects the manufacturing processes which can be used during the project, and also the length of the project. By using standard project models, the project is created using appropriate task lengths, according to the processes selected. In addition, the process expert is automatically inserted in the project, and the team leader can check his availability, to avoid overloads. Furthermore, each manufacturing process includes knowledge which is automatically inserted in the project as product process design specifications. This methodology was tested in a small firm specialized in manufacturing shutter part components. This company did not have a standard design method established. We were able to identify several barriers to the integration of the PLM tool in such an environment. The main difficulty was the resistance to change of the employees [19], but also the number of ongoing projects and the amount of data to be added by each actor in the project. As an actor in the implementation of such a tool, it seemed necessary to present a clear and usable tool. The first task carried out in relation to setting up the ACSP tool was to list all the deliverables and tasks integrated in a project in the state. Indeed, the company had no standard design procedure for these projects and project activities were performed in any order, with the result that information could be lost and communication was not efficient. Once the tasks were identified, the next step was to define standards of deliverables, according to a model that can be shared by all actors. A standard scheduling of these tasks was needed to standardize and streamline project information. A BPMN diagram was constructed using Gantt chart laws in order to organize these tasks. Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) is a graphical representation for specifying business processes in a business process model [START_REF] Ryan | BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT (BPM) STANDARDS: A SURVEY[END_REF]. Additional research to find the standard average duration of these tasks was achieved with the help of expert people using their knowledge and experience. This phase has revealed that the length of a project depends mainly on the number of manufacturing processes used in the project. Two different project templates were created: short and long. A long project is often an innovative project, where functional analysis, benchmarking, targeting or intellectual property analysis are included. A short project contains fewer tasks. The difference with a long project is that it is characterized by a more controlled environment which is much better known; the phase of information research is much shorter and simpler. Figure 2 shows the differences between both models by highlighting the design phase. In a short project, team work reflecting on the choice of a way to high or low risk is determined in advance by experts and leaders. In case of high risks, a feasibility study is carried out including a product and process FMEA. If the project runs low risk (for example, the customer wants an additional mounting hole), a solution is selected by cost quality and delay analysis based on experience and know-how during a collective brainstorming. The capitalization of this experiment is therefore necessary to facilitate and accelerate quantification of future projects. In general, projects consist of modifications of existing components, or creating a product variant on the basis of a well-known model. These routine tasks mainly occupy 60% of company projects studied. Thus, in a short project, the commercial offer for the customer is arrived at much more quickly than in a long project. Responsiveness is the most important factor for the customer.

Experimental protocol implemented for the analysis of ongoing projects

The tool ACSP is instrumented in order to quantify the changes in different types of projects. Indeed, performance indicators, based on respect of original deadlines have been established for each project. Other performance indicators are expected to provide a qualitative analysis of the design process, for example, through the documents most frequently traded by the designers, the task more frequently opened, the number of non-validations of a task (waste) etc... This work will then improve the proposed models (Figure 3), highlighting the tasks that are sometimes omitted or never used. In addition, the deliverables will bring more efficiency to current and future designs. Performance indicators will confirm whether the segmentation of tasks is appropriate. Using this analysis, we can also identify the critical paths, and provide more accurate duration of the standard steps of the model. We will improve the reliability of planning and can distribute the workload more evenly between stakeholders. Other analysis tools will highlight the process step where delays are recurring, and target, identify and implement an action plan to avoid them in the future.

Automating project creation

The module allows automatic creation of a project more quickly and easily than a traditional method (Figure 4). Based on performance indicators to capitalize the experience of the company, project templates (long and short) are continuously optimized. When a new project is created, the system updates the standard tasks duration according to the project length (ratio from project template) and updates the actual workload and the standards document. This allows an automatic upstream overview of the entire project, thereby improving the timeliness, quality, and organization of the project, but also a better level of customer response in terms of costs and lead time. In addition, using the intelligent project duplication module, projects of different lengths can be created from the standard project through automated coefficients, and setting: length, manufacturing processes, team leader and type of project. Thus, the user avoids performing an update on the duration of each task of a new project. In addition, according to the process chosen in the project (plastic injection, sheet metal forming, machining, stamping, etc.), knowledge and how-know, which can be formalised, are automatically included in the project as variables. Then, these variables could be used by the project actors or the process experts. For example, the variables included in the plastic injection process are the ranges of settings for the molding machine, or the relevant rules of plastic parts. These variables can be extracted in a KBE application and 3D design tree.

Conclusion

The addition to project management in semi-automated manufacturing PLM generates significant time savings in setting up a new project. Resource management and automatic verification workloads can create projects with realistic deadlines and alleviate work overload of team members. In parallel, the performance indicators enable continuous improvement of standard project templates. After the introduction of the tool ACSP in the company and its use by all business stakeholders, the prospects for highly productive engineering can be deployed specifically in terms of product and process. Thus, having capitalized knowledge of the company and by coupling ACSP / KBE (Knowledge based engineering) [START_REF] Marco Cantamessa | AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF THE PLM IMPLEMENTATION EFFECTS IN THE AEROSPACE INDUSTRY ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE[END_REF], it becomes possible to automatically generate applications such as "Kadviser" (four-dimensional parametric model incorporating the business rules of previously capitalized products). The aim is always to reduce the time dedicated to routine tasks.

Figure 2 :

 2 Figure 2 : Standard project models

Figure 3 :

 3 Figure 3 : project template continual improvement

Figure 4 :

 4 Figure 4 : New parameterized project creation