Formulating Redesign Strategies for Product Evolution: A Proactive Approach to Managing Technological Innovation

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With support from the National Science Foundation's Innovation and Organizational Change Program and GOALI, this research focuses on the development of an intelligent product representation for evolvable designs that can determine when new innovation indicates that a change in a previous decision is warranted. Deciding when to redesign a product is one of the most important decisions made by any company. Incorrect redesign timing can lead to a variety of problems and poor market response. Current strategies for deciding when to redesign products are usually ad hoc in nature, and may result in a significant lag between the time a technological innovation occurs and the time when it is successfully incorporated into a product design. The researchers are developing decision-making models that will work on intelligent product representations and generate suggestions for redesign These decision making models perform a detailed trade-off analysis whenever technological or business constraints change in the intelligent product representation. These models incorporate decision variables, design constraints, and evaluation criteria that have led to the decisions currently in use. The project will develop a multi-disciplinary course sequence that will incorporate the latest advances in the management of technology area into engineering and business curriculum.