Efficient Validation During Product Development Using a Self-optimizing Inspection System

In order to be competitive and to offer distinguishable products which delight customers, companies have to tailor their products to the exact needs and specifications of their customers. At the same time, companies have less time to develop new products or make changes to existing products, due to an overall shortening of product lifecycles and increasing market related cost pressure. Because of this lack of resources in product development, products are often not validated against the real customer impression until they reach the market. In consequence, companies risk nonacceptance of their products by the customer. Additional changes in product specifications might come too late and not make up for the lost trust of the customers in the company's products.To overcome this challenge, companies have to improve the product validation process, i.e. validate more quickly and earlier. A self-optimizing validation system could present a possible improvement in this regard. Using this efficient system, the validation could take place before the product is delivered to the market. In addition, the information from product validations would automatically be prepared and directed to the product development or the production process, to enable changes within the product specifications, without necessary interpretations of the validation. The paper gives answer to the question, how validation can be improved regarding efficiency and objectivity. To do so, the concept of a self-optimizing validation system using tactile sensors is presented, which can be used to validate the haptic product perception of customers. To display the relevant functions of this system and the necessary interfaces to the linked processes, a Viable Systems Model of the technical system is used to demonstrate this concept. The results implicate the applicability of the Viable Systems Model on technical systems and represent a contribution to the research towards a self-optimizing production system. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).