These are research themes that were active during the VINN Excellence Research Program 2007-2017.
During the Vinnova VINN excellence period, research was carried out in three multi-disciplinary themes. In these themes we met challenges and gathered the people most suited for each task, independent of which research group they belonged to. In reality, it meant that researchers from at least two groups of researchers always were included in each theme.
The change from more narrow projects to three broader themes was a way to open up for wider collaboration. It also enhanced marketing of the centre and its results, and thereby improved the implementation of results in new companies and business areas.
Product Development 4.0
Product Development 4.0 (PD 4.0) aimed to understand and develop theory, methods and tools necessary for new products and manufacturing systems, aligned with the ideas of Industry 4.0.
PD 4.0 realized the potential in Set-Based Engineering and Platform-Based Development by capitalizing on the advancements in digital design, simulation, visualization and digital prototyping. This enabled exploration and evaluation of design spaces, as parts of a fully digitalized development process.
The theme aimed to integrate and model all aspects of complex product and production systems, including models for novel manufacturing technologies and product technologies.
Smart Assembly
Assembly systems and technologies are key processes in the manufacturing of complex products. Focus areas in this theme were robust design, tolerance analysis, sequencing, path planning, assembly ergonomics, human/machine interactions, resource allocation and energy optimization.
The potential of increased digitalization, with better product and process knowledge, is used in an interlinked approach, where the conditions for each individual product are optimized to reach highest product quality with limited resource consumption. New materials give new manufacturing possibilities, but may also require new joining methods that need to be included in simulations. The area Smart Assembly aimed to contribute to the development of new theories, methods and digital tools that support highly efficient and effective assembly processes.
Perceived Quality
Perceived Quality (PQ) signifies how a customer interprets quality with their senses. This theme focused on how to develop products with an accurate level of PQ for the intended customer and product segment. This involved understanding the customers in order to find the adequate level, verifying PQ virtually and also understanding the impact on PQ from other attributes.
Product specifications to reach PQ can be very expensive, which means that sub-attributes within PQ need to be optimally balanced during product development. New methods and tools, to track PQ progress in developing programs in combination with qualitative and quantitative customer data, were developed to support this process in the theme. Automated data gathering methods, connected products, and data sharing increase the availability of data. This enhances the possibilities to understand customer behaviour and interaction with other attributes. The theme also intended to investigate how adjacent attributes and customer interaction indirectly affect interpretation of PQ.
