A framework for product-service system design case similarity measurement

Abstract

Design experience from previous design cases can help designers developing newer design solutions. A case-based recommender system can recall suitable design cases for designers based on a similarity measure-ment mechanism. In the context of Product-service System (PSS) design, the measurement of similarity between different cases becomes more complex and challenging because of the complex nature of the PSS design, and the interdependencies of product and service. Existing research cannot provide a comprehensive case representation framework, or a suitable retrieval strategy for comparison of PSS design cases. In this research, we propose a PSS design case similarity measurement framework in which a PSS design case is indexed and quantified by design activity elements, design process and function requirement. We also specify the way to measure similarity between case indexes and design cases. A case study was conducted to validate the proposed framework. The results show that the proposed framework performed well in terms of PSS design case comparison, the design knowledge representation framework and similarity measurement methods are applicable for effective PSS design case comparison in practice. The significant contributions of this thesis are as follows. ? Represents design activity using context-based activity model. Context-based activity model is developed for modeling different stakeholders’ activities in certain con-text. To utilize the context-based activity model for designers’ activity, the action verb (design) for the model is developed to contain various sub-design activities. Therefore, the design knowledge related to sub-design activi-ties is collected by context-based activity model for design activity. Our aim of design experience reusing is not for the detail PSS design, but the selection of design cases that can provide design implications to designer. Based on the activity theory, we narrowed down the scope of design knowledge to those h...