CAREER: Giving You "Almost" What You Want - Customizing Products Through the Integration of Market Modeling and Engineering Design

这个学院早期职业发展（Career）奖的研究目标是检验一个假设，即改进偏好建模和工程设计的整合可以导致定制产品更好地适应异质市场和不断变化的需求。虽然大规模定制——为客户提供他们想要的东西——已经出现了重大失败，但在全球市场上的竞争力需要平衡目标产品架构和消费者可定制的组件。研究任务确定，将推动工程师如何：1)利用消费者的偏好；2)管理系统灵活性；3)实现系统可重构性。教育目标涉及的活动，重点是多学科，跨学科和系统级教育的当前和未来的工程师。实现这些目标的部分方法是：1)在四所高中的试点研究中引入基于计算机的多学科设计优化问题；2)致力于跨学科设计的本科通识教育主题轨道。如果成功的话，这项研究将使美国制造企业能够确定这样的市场：通过个性化（由制造商完成）和定制化（由消费者完成），为客户提供“几乎”他们想要的东西，从而实现最大价值。此外，通过了解组件属性如何影响系统重构，将定义可重构性的可行市场和核心技术。教育目标将创建一个设计线程，从高中延伸到研究生院。在中学教育中应用多学科模拟是培养具有跨学科能力的工程师的第一步，并将通过揭示当今社会挑战来促进工程的多样性。在大学阶段，工程专业的学生将专注于跨学科的主题，而非工程专业的学生将接触到产品设计的原理。由于北卡罗来纳州立大学目前没有普通教育学分的工程课程，这一主题课程将在全校范围内产生影响。

The research objective of this Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award is to test the hypothesis that improving the integration of preference modeling and engineering design can lead to customized products better suited to respond to heterogeneous markets and changing needs. While mass customization - providing customers with exactly what they want - has seen significant failures, competitiveness in a global market requires balancing targeted product architectures with consumer-customizable components. Research tasks are identified that will advance how engineers: 1) utilize consumer preferences; 2) manage system flexibility; and 3) implement system reconfigurability. The educational objectives engage in activities that focus on the multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and systems-level education of current and future engineers. These objectives are achieved in part by: 1) introducing computer-based multidisciplinary design optimization problems in a pilot study at four high schools; and 2) working toward an undergraduate general education thematic track in interdisciplinary design. If successful, this research will allow American manufacturing enterprises to identify markets where giving a customer 'almost' what they want - through personalization (done by the manufacturer) and customization (done by the consumer) - can deliver maximum value. Further, by understanding how component properties influence system reconfigurations, viable markets and core technologies for reconfigurability will be defined. The educational objectives will create a design thread that extends from high school through graduate school. Applying multidisciplinary simulations in secondary education is a first step toward producing engineers with interdisciplinary competency, and will be used to promote diversity in engineering by shedding light on today's societal challenges. At the collegiate level, engineering students will get focused exposure to interdisciplinary topics, while students outside of engineering will be exposed to principles of product design. As NC State currently has no engineering classes available for general education credit, this thematic track will have campus-wide effects.