The Computer Integrated Manufacturing Laboratory is a constituent laboratory of the Institute for Systems Research at the University of Maryland.

PREMISE: Applying Decision Production Systems to Improve Environmentally Responsible Product Development

• Dr. Jeffrey W. Herrmann, Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Institute for Systems Research
• Dr. Peter A. Sandborn, Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering
• Dr. Linda C. Schmidt, Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Institute for Systems Research
• Mr. Daniel P. Fitzgerald, Graduate Research Fellow, Institute for Systems Research

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number 0225863. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Project Summary

The objective of this research project is to understand how product development organizations use environmental information in their decision-making during the design of a new product. The research views product development as an information flow governed by decision-makers who must act under time and budget constraints. The project will conduct an exploratory study to describe the flow of information related to environmental decision-making in the product development activities of an electronics manufacturing company. The project will construct a long-term collaborative research agenda to improve environmentally responsible product development, particularly by integrating design decision support tools into other product development activities.

This research will yield new models that guide the development of powerful decision support tools (for specific decision- makers) and the rational and systematic deployment of these tools across the entire product development organization. Ultimately, this will reduce the time and cost of environmentally responsible product development across a range of industrial sectors. The research will benefit society by helping manufacturing companies develop energy-efficient and environmentally benign products.

Publicity

• An article in the ISR newsletter.
• Our poster from the 2003 ISR Research Review Day.
• The Institute for Systems Research has included this project on its page of Research Briefs.

Publications

• Jeffrey W. Herrmann and Linda C. Schmidt, Viewing Product Development as a Decision Production System, DETC2002/DTM-34030, 14th International Conference on Design Theory and Methodology, ASME 2002 Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference, Montreal, Canada, September 29 - October 2, 2002.
• Jeffrey W. Herrmann, Peter A. Sandborn, and Linda C. Schmidt, Applying Decision Production Systems to Improve Environmentally Responsible Product Development, 2003 NSF Design, Service and Manufacturing Grantees and Research Conference, Birmingham, Alabama, January 6-9, 2003.
• Daniel P. Fitzgerald, Jeffrey W. Herrmann, Peter A. Sandborn, and Linda C. Schmidt, Environmentally Responsible Product Development: Information Flow, Objectives, and Metrics, 2004 NSF Design, Service and Manufacturing Grantees and Research Conference, Dallas, Texas, January 5-8, 2004.
• Jeffrey W. Herrmann, Information Flow and Decision-Making in Production Scheduling, submitted to the 2004 Industrial Engineering Research Conference, Houston, Texas, May 15-19, 2004.
• Jeffrey W. Herrmann, Decomposition in Product Development, ISR Technical Report 2004-6, February 4, 2004. (Also submitted to the 16th International Design Theory and Methodology Conference.)
• Fitzgerald, Daniel P., Jeffrey W. Herrmann, Peter A. Sandborn, Linda C. Schmidt, Thornton H. Gogoll, Beyond Tools: A Design for Environment Process, International Journal of Performability Engineering, Volume 1, Number 2, pages 105-120, 2005. Previously published as Technical Report 2005-69, Institute for Systems Research, University of Maryland, College Park, 2005.
• Fitzgerald, Daniel P., Jeffrey W. Herrmann, Peter A. Sandborn, and Linda C. Schmidt, Using the Decision Production Systems Approach to Improve Product Development, submitted to the ASME Design Theory and Methodology Conference, Long Beach, California, 2005.
• Herrmann, Jeffrey W., Controlling Iteration in Product Development Processes, Technical Report 2005-91, Institute for Systems Research, University of Maryland, College Park.
• Herrmann, Jeffrey W., Managing Problem-Solving Iterations in Product Development, submitted to IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, July 7, 2005.
• Fitzgerald, Daniel P., Greening Our Global Manufacturing Enterprise, Technical Report 2005-107, Institute for Systems Research, University of Maryland, College Park, 2005. This essay was a winner of the 2005 ASME/NSF Design Essay Competition.
• Fitzgerald, Daniel P., Jeffrey W. Herrmann, Peter A. Sandborn, and Linda C. Schmidt, Environmental Objectives for New Product Development Decision-Making, submitted to Business Strategy and the Environment, December, 2005.
• Fitzgerald, Daniel P., Jeffrey W. Herrmann, and Linda C. Schmidt, Improving Environmental Design Using TRIZ Inventive Principles, Proceedings of the 16th CIRP International Design Seminar, Alberta, Canada, July 16-19, 2006.

Copyright Notice: The papers listed are copyrighted. Personal use of this material is permitted. However, permission to reprint or republish this material for advertising or promotional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists or to reuse any copyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the copyright holder.

Dissertation

Fitzgerald, Daniel Patrick, ENVRIZ: A Methodology for Resolving Conflicts between Product Functionality and Environmental Impact, University of Maryland, December, 2011.

Last updated by Jeffrey W. Herrmann, February 24, 2012.

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