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This research aims to develop a model for describing and analysing materials supply systems (MSSs) design in product development projects (PDPs).

Literature on materials supply and production systems design is reviewed in order to derive a MSSs design model. The model is applied to empirical data from a qualitative case study, which exemplifies how the model can serve to describe MSSs design in PDPs. Moreover, the model is used to analyse the empirical data related to the focus and characteristics of the design issues.

The model developed contains six areas: materials feeding, storage, transportation, handling, packaging, and manufacturing planning and control at four levels: supply chain, plant, sub‐unit, and utility.

Future research could complement the model by developing a design process to enable systematic design of the MSS as well as the integration of materials supply aspects at an early stage of PDPs. Such a design process should also consider the design of the flows of specific components.

The importance of considering the relationships between the six design areas as well as evaluating the whole MSS is highlighted.

The paper focuses on the materials supply aspects dealt with in PDPs, which have been the subject of little research interest so far, despite the fact that extensive resources are required for materials supply activities.

Retail design concepts are complex designs meeting functional and aesthetic demands from various constraint generators. However, the literature on this topic is sparse and offers only little support for store designers to deal with such challenges. To address this issue, the purpose of this paper is to identify the most important constraint generators, investigating the types of constraints they generate, and providing guidelines for how to deal with constraint elicitation.

The three contributions mentioned above are developed through discussions of the literature and eight case studies of fashion store design projects.

The paper shows that the influence of the constraint generators decreases during the design process except for supplier-generated constraints, which increase in the final stages of the design process. The paper argues that constraints should be elicited close to their occurrence, and that doing so requires a solid understanding of relevant constraint generators.

The paper provides a structured basis for further research and identifies areas warranting further study. Although, the paper’s focus is on fashion store design, the findings may, to some degree, be applicable to other types of store design projects.

The understandings provided by this paper may help designers to deal proactively with constraints, reducing the use of resources to alter design proposals.

The paper: defines the most important constraint generators from the perspective of retail store designers, clarifies the types of constraints they generate, and provides guidelines for how to deal with constraint elicitation.

This paper aims to investigate the role of value measuring (VM) as an integrated part of a deal introduced to govern the cross-boundary relationship of state specialist- and primary care providers in the Norwegian health sector.

Drawing on a longitudinal ethnographic case study, this study explores the role of payment for dischargeable patients (PDP), an incentive arrangement introduced as a mechanism of value appropriation intended to create stability in the relationship and support improved patient flows between care providers. The fieldwork took place over approximately 18 months, consisting of intensive participant observations, interviews and document studies.

The VM integrated in the PDP deal between the hospital and municipality, on the surface level, appears simple. The VM, however, rests on a very complex practice of information sharing where accounts on patient status, procedures and activities form the basis of the integrated VM. The deal and its VM, despite its ambitious aims, were not able to fulfill the expectations of a smooth appropriation of value through the management of monetary flows or supporting information sharing for value creation. The VM of the PDP deal aimed at bringing the parties closer together, rather created a distance where money matters became a source of tension.

This study investigates the interconnections of deals and VM in a public sector service context, showing aspects of deals different from that of prior studies into private sector deals.

Reinforced concrete (R.C.) beams are part of the structure so their design depends on the structural code and its requirements. In this paper, two simply supported R.C. beams were designed in terms of flexural and shear strength design requirements and investigated in terms of deflections and crack widths, when subjected to two asymmetric concentrated loadings, where one load is double the other one. Both beams had dimensions of 3,500 mm length, 200 mm width, and 300 mm height. The first beam (beam B1) was designed according to the combination of the structural requirements of American and Saudi building codes (ACI318-and-SBC304), while the second beam (beam B2) was designed according to the structural requirements of Eurocode (EC2). The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The design of ultimate capacity (section capacity) to design both flexure and shear capacity according to the design provisions in EC2 code deals with the Ultimate Limit State Design Approach, while it deals with the Ultimate Strength Design Approach according to the design provisions in both ACI318 and SBC304 codes. In the serviceability (mid-span deflection and flexural crack width) check, the three codes deal with the Serviceability Limit State Design Approach.

The laboratory behaviour of both test beams was as expected in flexure and failed in shear, but there was more shear cracks in the left shear span for both beams. This refers to the left applied loading and the spacing of shear links, where the failure occurred at the higher loading points. Perhaps, if the number of links was increased in the left side of the beam during the manufacture and reinforcing of the beam, the failure loading will be delayed and the diagonal cracks will be decreased.

From this study, it was concluded that: the ACI318 and SBC304 design approaches are safer than the EC2 design approach. The EC2 design approach is more economic than the ACI318 and SBC304 design approaches. The structural behaviour of both test beams was as expected in flexure but both beams failed in shear. The shear failure was in the left side of both test beams which was referred to a high loading point. Diagonal cracks followed the applied loading until both beams reached to the failure.

The objective of this research is to develop a structure for a materials supply systems (MSSs) design process to be used during product development projects (PDPs).

The research is based on a qualitative study at a first tier supplier in the automotive industry. Empirical data were gathered over the course of one year and analysed by means of a previously developed MSSs design model and the company's product development phases.

A structure for a MSSs design process has been developed, based on the following four phases: planning, concept development, system‐level design and detail design.

Future research could further develop the structure discussed in this paper and complement it with engineering tools for use during the design process.

The results underline the importance of a MSSs design process and emphasise that such a process should cover activities at an early stage of PDPs. Moreover, the necessity of coordinating the specifications of the various materials flows and evaluating the entire MSS before becoming absorbed by detailed design issues is highlighted.

This paper complements the rapidly growing literature on concurrent engineering by emphasising the importance of integrating the materials supply aspects at an early stage of PDPs and designing the MSS in integration with the product and the production system.

The purpose of this study is to explore an ontology of designer-user interaction with a knowledge management foundation. To address this research gap, the authors ask the following research question: what types of knowledge on designer-user interactions are associated with design function and approach in creating effective design outcomes in a collaborative design process?

Based on ontology of a knowledge management foundation and 99 design projects, the authors conceptualized the ontology of designer-user interaction, which considers design role, function, approach and outcome as a knowledge of designer-user interaction in the design process.

Based on this analysis, the authors theorize an ontology of designer-user interactions with five dimensions: participant, role, function, design approach and design outcome. Also, this study presents a case study of how this ontology could be applied into the actual projects.

In this study, the authors explore an ontology of designer-user interaction with a knowledge management foundation, because previous interdisciplinary design studies have not formalized the types of designer-user interaction. To address this research gap, the authors ask the following research question: What types of knowledge on designer-user interactions are associated with design function and approach in creating effective design outcomes in a collaborative design process?

The purpose of this paper is to explore activities, challenges, and suggest tactics for the design of industrial reconfigurable production systems that can easily adapt to changing market opportunities.

The paper synthesizes the empirical findings of seven case studies including 47 in-depth interviews at four manufacturing companies.

A conceptual production system design process and including activities that enables a long-term perspective considering reconfigurability is proposed. Additionally, critical challenges indicating that reconfigurable production system design is not a trivial issue but one that requires separate control and coordination are identified and tactics to overcome the challenges described.

The authors propose a process for designing reconfigurable production systems that are better suited to adjust to future needs. The knowledge of reconfigurability from the reconfigurable manufacturing system literature is applied in the general production system literature field. This study contributes to a clearer picture of managerial challenges that need to be dealt with when designing a reconfigurable production system.

By clarifying key activities facilitating a long-term perspective in the design process and highlighting challenges and tactics for improvement, the findings are particularly relevant to production engineers and plant managers interested in increasing the ability to adapt to future changes through reconfigurability and improve the efficiency of their production system design process.

Although reconfigurable production systems are critical for the success of manufacturing companies, the process of designing such systems is not clear. This paper stretches this by giving a comprehensive picture of the production system design process and the activities that need to be considered to meet these challenges.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between social-material interaction and the monetary aspects of business relationships in the construction industry. The authors term the formal financial agreements necessary for such activities “deals”, and this paper seeks to open a research avenue to further investigate the multifaceted interaction processes among business actors. The construction industry is a suitable empirical setting for this purpose; its project-based character and societal position of linking business with the construction of essential community infrastructure imply that different types of money-handling activities need to be managed continuously with both short-term and long-term effects taken into account.

To investigate the deals, i.e., the interface between socio-material interaction and the money-handling processes in the construction industry, as well as studying the potential interrelatedness of deals, the authors performed a case study involving three interrelated housing projects in Uppsala, Sweden.

The study shows that deals do not only have an intricate relationship to the social-material interaction processes among construction actors, but they also become interrelated in specific ways to form “deal structures” as actors engage in different business relationships over time. This means, for instance, that a single deal can enable several other deals, and involved actors have different abilities in performing deals. Hence, most deals are part of a “broader” interaction pattern of social and material resources spanning the organizational borders of individual companies.

Within the industrial marketing and purchasing, the socio-material interaction among actors has been well studied, but less attention has been paid to the monetary dimension and its relationship to the socio-material interaction processes. In particular, this study provides an understanding of monetary agreements in the construction industry.

Presents a multi‐agent system (MAS) for collaborative design in the construction sector. The system is intended to form a basis for integrating the often distributed cross‐functional activities that characterise collaborative design in construction. The MAS supports interaction and negotiation between the different agents that represent various participants that are usually engaged in a typical collaborative project design. The system is composed of different agents that provide services within the MAS environment. While some of the support services are provided by the agent platform, task agents that represent various functional disciplines undertake the real design activities. Describes details of the MAS, which simulates and demonstrates peer‐to‐peer interaction, communication and negotiation between the design agents in a collaborative design space. Also highlights important issues in MAS development and makes recommendations on how to improve collaborative design in construction using the MAS paradigm.

In this paper we present a roadmap for the elicitation of business rules based on different stakeholders' perspectives, in order to facilitate the processes of structuring, organizing and expressing business tactic and policy in a way that it is close to the business milieu and stakeholders' viewpoints.

This paper has derived from a combined research practice. Initially, the development of a roadmap for understanding different stakeholders' perspectives and for identifying their views on business tactics and policies was based on well‐grounded work on enterprise goal modelling, combined with a theoretical study of business rule – related concepts. The outcome of this work was tested against a real business case dealing with the development of an electronic procurement system in the pre‐fabricated construction sector.

As a conclusion, the paper put forward a comprehensive methodological framework for dealing with rule‐intensive projects. The proposed roadmap can help IT practitioners in collecting and organizing business rule statements that apply within a particular organization, either towards the implementation of change on a business level, or in the context of specifying the (existing or future) functionality of supporting information systems (IS).

The rule roadmap presented here has been coupled with a modelling approach for expressing rules in a structured, consistent manner and for organizing them in a rule repository. Future work includes the extension of this approach to cover design and implementation as part of rule‐centric information systems engineering.

Therefore, the overall contribution of this work relates to the provision of guidance for identifying business policy and tactics at an intentional level (through the investigation of the rationale behind them) and for transforming relevant models to the operational level, where business rules are linked to business processes, information and systems.

Although the business rule concept has been examined from different points of view over the past years, the paper attempts to bridge the gap between approaches that see rules as extensions of business goals, other approaches that consider rules as limitations on the way business activities are performed, and finally, approaches according to which rules constrain the creation, modification and deletion of information entities.