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Dynamic relationships between technologies and organizations are investigated through research on digital visualization technologies and their use in the construction sector. Theoretical work highlights mutual adaptation between technologies and organizations but does not explain instances of sustained, sudden, or increasing maladaptation. By focusing on the technological field, I draw attention to hierarchical structuring around inter-dependent levels of technology; technological priorities of diverse groups; power asymmetries and disjunctures between contexts of development and use. For complex technologies, such as digital technologies, I argue these field-level features explain why organizations peripheral to the field may experience difficulty using emerging technology.

Quality Function Deployment (QFD) proposes to take into account the “voice of the customer,” through a list of customer needs, which are (qualitatively) mapped to technical requirements in House One. But customers do not perceive products in this space, nor do they not make purchase decisions in this space. Marketing specialists use statistical models to map between a simpler space of customer perceptions and the long and detailed list of needs. For automobiles, for example, the main axes in perceptual space might be categories such as luxury, performance, sport, and utility. A product’s position on these few axes determines the detailed customer requirements consistent with the automobiles’ position such as interior volume, gauges and accessories, seating type, fuel economy, door height, horsepower, interior noise level, seating capacity, paint colors, trim, and so forth. Statistical models such as factor analysis and principal components analysis are used to describe the mapping between these spaces, which we call House Zero.

This paper focus on House One. Two important steps of the product development process using House One are: (1) setting technical targets; (2) identifying the inherent tradeoffs in a design including a position of merit. Utility functions are used to determine feature preferences for a product. Conjoint analysis is used to capture the product preference and potential market share. Linear interpolation and the slope point formula are used to determine other points of customer needs. This research draws from the formal mapping concepts developed by Nam Suh and the qualitative maps of quality function deployment, to present unified information and mapping paradigm for concurrent product/process design. This approach is the virtual integrated design method that is tested upon data from a business design problem.

This paper deals with the organizing of interactive product development. Developing products in interaction between firms may provide benefits in terms of specialization, increased innovation, and possibilities to perform development activities in parallel. However, the differentiation of product development among a number of firms also implies that various dependencies need to be dealt with across firm boundaries. How dependencies may be dealt with across firms is related to how product development is organized. The purpose of the paper is to explore dependencies and how interactive product development may be organized with regard to these dependencies.

The analytical framework is based on the industrial network approach, and deals with the development of products in terms of adaptation and combination of heterogeneous resources. There are dependencies between resources, that is, they are embedded, implying that no resource can be developed in isolation. The characteristics of and dependencies related to four main categories of resources (products, production facilities, business units and business relationships) provide a basis for analyzing the organizing of interactive product development.

Three in-depth case studies are used to explore the organizing of interactive product development with regard to dependencies. The first two cases are based on the development of the electrical system and the seats for Volvo’s large car platform (P2), performed in interaction with Delphi and Lear respectively. The third case is based on the interaction between Scania and Dayco/DFC Tech for the development of various pipes and hoses for a new truck model.

The analysis is focused on what different dependencies the firms considered and dealt with, and how product development was organized with regard to these dependencies. It is concluded that there is a complex and dynamic pattern of dependencies that reaches far beyond the developed product as well as beyond individual business units. To deal with these dependencies, development may be organized in teams where several business units are represented. This enables interaction between different business units’ resource collections, which is important for resource adaptation as well as for innovation. The delimiting and relating functions of the team boundary are elaborated upon and it is argued that also teams may be regarded as actors. It is also concluded that a modular product structure may entail a modular organization with regard to the teams, though, interaction between business units and teams is needed. A strong connection between the technical structure and the organizational structure is identified and it is concluded that policies regarding the technical structure (e.g. concerning “carry-over”) cannot be separated from the management of the organizational structure (e.g. the supplier structure). The organizing of product development is in itself a complex and dynamic task that needs to be subject to interaction between business units.

In January 2016, Georgia Tech launched a campus-wide academic initiative (“Center for Serve-Learn-Sustain”) aimed at preparing undergraduate students in all majors to use their disciplinary knowledge and skills to contribute to the major societal challenge of creating sustainable communities. The initiative calls for faculty members from all six Georgia Tech colleges to develop courses and co-curricular opportunities that will help students learn about sustainability and community engagement and hone their skills by engaging in real-world projects with nonprofit, community, government, and business partners. Affiliated courses address various aspects of the Center’s sustainable communities framework, which presents sustainability as an integrated system connecting environment, economy, and society. This chapter reports on one engineering instructor’s ongoing efforts that bring sustainability into the engineering classroom through sociotechnical project-based learning. This cornerstone design course is one of more than 100 Center-affiliated courses currently offered; the full set of Center-affiliated courses enrolls over 5,000 students per year across all six colleges. The sustainability activities introduced in the freshman design course pertain particularly to the Center’s vision that all graduates of the institute, a majority of whom will graduate with engineering degrees, are able to contribute to the creation of sustainable communities and to understand the impact of their professional practice on the communities in which they work. A situated knowledge and learning pedagogical theory is used in the Center-affiliated course, where concept, activity, and context are involved in student learning to produce useable robust knowledge. The sociotechnical project-based teaching model with contextualized design problems is used to engage students throughout the course by utilizing computer-aided-design problems that incorporate sustainability within both individual and team projects. In this chapter, the authors present the pedagogical approaches to learning, strategies, and challenges for implementation and assessment of intervention activities, and data analyses of both student reflection data and pre- and post-survey data.

Since much of the design work for vessels and offshore installations occurs in countries other than where the vessel may operate or where the installation may be located, it is particularly important that the expected user be considered and accommodated through the design and operational phases of a project.

Within the framework of engineering design and marine operations, this chapter will discuss “soft” issues, such as organizational and line management decisions and personnel selection procedures, as well as “hardware” issues related to design of living and working environments. In particular, the chapter will address how culture should be considered while identifying “user” needs and requirements.