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

该学院早期职业发展(Career)奖的研究目标是验证这样一个假设，即改进偏好建模和工程设计的集成可以导致定制产品更适合于响应不同的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-已经经历了重大失败，但在全球市场上的竞争力需要平衡有针对性的产品架构和消费者可定制的组件。确定的研究任务将推动工程师如何：1)利用消费者偏好；2)管理系统灵活性；以及3)实现系统可重构性。教育目标涉及多学科、跨学科和系统水平的现有和未来工程师教育。这些目标的实现部分是通过：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；以及2)致力于在跨学科设计中建立本科通识教育主题轨道。如果成功，这项研究将使美国制造企业能够识别出市场，在这些市场中，通过个性化(由制造商完成)和定制(由消费者完成)，为客户提供他们想要的东西可以提供最大价值。此外，通过了解组件特性如何影响系统重新配置，将定义可行的市场和可重新配置的核心技术。教育目标将创造一个从高中到研究生院的设计线索。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，并将通过揭示当今的社会挑战来促进工程学的多样性。在大学阶段，工程专业的学生将专注于跨学科的话题，而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提供普通教育学分的工程学课程，这一主题轨道将在整个校园产生影响。

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.