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This paper overviews work on a computer based consultation system, which uses artificial intelligence principles, and has been designed to aid the non‐specialist engineering designer or production engineer in the domain of design for assembly.

An orientation system incorporating a low power He‐Ne laser system is described. In one application grub screws were fed at rates in excess of 100 per minute

Argues that the costs and problems of quality are largely predetermined in product development and, therefore, there are limits to what can be achieved thereafter by the application of best‐practice manufacture and quality control. Presents knowledge‐based design‐for‐quality methods which enable a business to identify product characteristics which represent potential failures and their associated costs. Discusses application modes and includes a product case study.

Supervision is considered the signature pedagogy and after direct client practice it is rated as the number one learning and development method by practitioners. However, as we set out in this chapter, the relationship between supervision and client outcomes is not a strong one. Drawing on the use of routine outcome data, we demonstrate how clinical supervision can be improved when both practitioner and supervisor demonstrate an attitude of humility and a willingness to learn from the data they collect. Using these data to enhance supervision by improving client outcomes and to inform deliberate practice (DP) is the hall mark of the effective twenty-first century practitioner and supervisor.

Based on fieldwork carried out on two Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council‐funded projects in the area of design, the paper presents the details of an assessment approach which has been developed to assess the use and application of quality tools and techniques in the new product design and development process. Its use will help management recognise the symptoms, root causes, issues and problems that are adversely affecting NPDD, with respect to application (or lack of it) of quality tools and techniques.

A knowledge‐based system is under development to provide component designers at CAD workstations with estimated costs and proposed design modifications for automated manufacture.

Many organizational approaches and technological opportunities are available or under development to improve the integration of design and construction. The opportunities offered by information technology are especially promising. Combining organizational approaches with state‐of‐the‐art technologies in a systematic manner will allow firms to derive the full benefits of computer‐aided design for construction. The present paper describes a framework that helps researchers and practitioners approach computer‐aided design for construction systematically. The framework identifies six interactions between design and construction. It is based on frame‐works for design for manufacture and on an analysis of current building practice. Design for manufacture has proven most effective when integrated into a cyclical product development process. The present framework serves as a road map for the building industry to formalize its information flows, to integrate design for construction into its linear facility delivery process and to approach a more cyclical delivery process.

A survey of papers and design‐for‐assembly systems shows where this discipline should be heading.

In almost all of the existing resources of failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA), “severity” is being determined from the designers’ point of view, not from the customers’ side. In this paper, a new approach is proposed to enhance FMEA capabilities through its integration with Kano model. This evolves the current approaches for determination of severity and “risk priority number” (RPN) through classifying severities according to customers’ perceptions. It supports the nonlinear relationship between frequency and severity of failure. Also a new index called “correction ratio” (Cr) is proposed to assess the corrective actions in FMEA. The findings of a short case study highlight the gap between managers and customers in prioritising a set of failures and the difference between RPN and Cr prioritisations, caused by target failure frequencies. The proposed approach enables managers/designers to prevent failures at early stages of design, based on customers who have not experienced their products/services yet.

Reduced part count is a powerful cost‐saving element of design‐for‐assembly systems. A method has been developed in which component function and relationship data are used to present advice to the designer.