Supporting Product Development

Golden Gate Bridge

Supporting Product Development through Automatically Generated Design Structure Matrices

On Wednesday 19 July2017, the Centre for Systems Engineering & Innovation hosted Dr James Gopsill from University of Bristol.

Event slides link

Speaker biography:
James Gopsill is a Senior Research and Teaching Associate at the University of Bristol, and has recently been appointed lecturer in Engineering Design at the University of Bath, which he will transition into in May. His research interests are in engineering informatics, advanced prototyping technologies and democratising design. His post-doctoral work has been on the EPSRC-funded Language of Collaborative Manufacturing (LOCM) project where he has focused on the monitoring and analysis of digital models within PLM/BIM systems in order to produce sensors for project monitoring, change propagation and assessment of competence. His doctoral work developed a novel and bespoke Social Media approach to support Engineering Design Communication. He has published works in Advanced Engineering Informatics (AIE), Artificial Intelligence for Engineering Design, Analysis and Manufacturing (AIEDAM) and Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part B: Journal of Engineering Manufacture, and he is an active member of the Design Society.

Abstract:
Design Structure Matrices (DSMs) have become a fundamental tool to support engineers in their handling and management of interactions across product & organisational architectures. However, the generation of such matrices has become an increasingly resource intensive task due to the need to interview/survey expert engineers from across the various disciplines and stakeholders involved. It is the resource intensive nature of the data capture that leads to DSMs often representing a snapshot of a product architecture during its development.In order to overcome this, this presentation presents work that has exploited the digital footprint captured by Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) systems to generate DSMs in real-time and discussed the potential insights it can bring to support product development. In addition, the presentation will showcase the current work looking to implement the technique within an engineering project as well as the wider PLM/BIM research activities occurring at the University of Bath and University of Bristol.