ENHANCING MODULAR DESIGN WITH CREATIVITY TOOLS

This research work regards the development of a new roadmap for complex products design based on an improved modular approach. The goal is to refine an existing method affected by some drawbacks into a to new product development paradigm, with the aim of reducing design times, mistakes and subjectivity. The best results came from integrating a set of diverse methodologies for product design and systematic innovation. The proposed design paradigm is based on an improved Modular-TRIZ-DSM approach, and the results obtained, in terms of modules definition and interfaces, have been evaluated. The most important results concern a better repeatability of design results and the capability to forecast technical evolution of a specific product family. After a short description of the methodologies of interest, the roadmap is described focusing on the differences from the traditional method.