This book contains the contributions presented in the 5th WDK Workshop on Product Structuring in Tampere, Finland, in February 2000. Special theme was Design for Configuration. Besides the papers it includes developed summaries from the discussions of the expert group. Thus, the book provides the reader with a review of the latest discussion in the ongoing process of Product Structuring. Even though the meeting was of academic nature, the papers include many practical examples of industrial applications. In order to give a comprehensive picture of the aspects of Design for Configuration the...

Change is one of the most significant parameters in our society. Designers are amongst the primary change agents for any society. As a consequence design is an important research topic in engineering and architecture and related disciplines, since design is not only a means of change but is also one of the keystones to economic competitiveness and the fundamental precursor to manufacturing. The development of computational models founded on the artificial intelligence paradigm has provided an impetus for much of current design research -both computational and cognitive. These forms of design...

Product Structuring for Design Reuse, Product Platform systems, Configuration and Modularisation is gaining growing attention in global operating companies as means to enhance productivity in manufacturing of customised product variants. th In that situation it was a great opportunity to get the 5 Product Structuring Workshop to Tampere. The special theme of the workshop was chosen Design for Configuration. We see that Knowledge Systematisation is an important research area for Product Structuring. We made a decision to apply Knowledge Systematisation for the workshop itself: we used the...

Design is an important research topic in engineering and architecture, since design is not only a means of change but also one of the keystones of economic competitiveness and the fundamental precursor to manufacturing. However, our understanding of design as a process and our ability to model it are still very limited. The development of computational models founded on the artificial intelligence paradigm has provided an impetus for much of current design research -- both computational and cognitive. Notwithstanding their immaturity noticeable advances have been made both in extending our...

Designing is one of the foundations for change in our society. It is a fundamental precursor to manufacturing, fabrication and construction. Design research aims to develop an understanding of designing and to produce models of designing that can be used to aid designing. The papers in this volume are from the Sixth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Design (AID'00) held in June 2000, in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA. They represent the state of the art and the cutting edge of research and development in this field, and demonstrate both the depth and breadth of the...

Exploration and Innovation in Design is one of the first books to present both conceptual and computational models of processes which have the potential to produce innovative results at early stages of design. Discussed here is the concept of exploration where the system, using computational processes, moves outside predefined available decisions. Sections of this volume discuss areas such as design representation and search, exploration and the emergence of new criteria, and precedent-based adaptation. In addition, the author presents the overall architecture of a design system and...