Design Thinking Engineering
Design Thinking Engineering is an approach to product or system design that combines the principles of design thinking and engineering. The aim is to develop products and systems that meet users’ needs through digital prototyping, by digitizing as many stages of the engineering and design process as possible.
More and more often, projects involve international, delocalized or parallel hierarchical teams who have to succeed together. They don’t have the same culture, nor the same history, and they don’t share the same working methodologies.
These teams have to work with their own tools and those of others to reduce development time and secure the prototyping, pre-production and production phases.
These tools don’t always talk to each other, and the sometimes heterogeneous data is rarely usable without reprocessing. Teams need to redouble their vigilance and agility.
They can also choose to be accompanied by our teams. DAES to support data analysis, communicate their toolboxes and rethink their Design Thinking Engineering: what input/output for simulations, what format, what flexibility is possible, how to limit inconsistencies while preserving a good level of relationships between project players?
Our specialized engineers support project teams in mapping out the engineering process, analyzing the tools used, benchmarking market solutions, drawing up functional specifications, and developing scripts or apps to transfer information throughout the development cycle.
An extension of systems thinking in engineering, the Design Thinking Engineering approach will also enable teams to explore possible evolutions of their products or systems very easily, by rapidly and digitally testing new concepts and integrating stakeholders more fully into the digital environment.
More than just digitizing design processes, it’s about intelligence in design modes, to reduce Time 2 Market while improving products!
Here are a few reasons why Design Thinking Engineering can be useful:
Focused on innovation
By integrating the principles of design thinking, Design Thinking Engineering focuses on understanding the needs and uses of stakeholders within engineering teams, by creating a digital design chain.
Iterative approach
Design Thinking Engineering uses an iterative approach to design and develop products and systems. This means that ideas can be tested and refined throughout the design process, and back-and-forth and looping can be done very quickly at each stage.
Interdisciplinary collaboration
Design Thinking Engineering encourages collaboration between experts from different fields, such as design, engineering, marketing and production, and helps reduce the costs and risks associated with new product development. Thanks to the integration and extension of the digital chain, it is possible to bring together a variety of perspectives to design products that meet both user needs and technical and economic requirements.
The simulation engineer plays an important role in the Design Thinking Engineering process, helping to evaluate the performance of products or systems throughout their life cycle.
Because they are able to propose virtual test developments, our engineers will also, where possible, work on their automation and on the creation of codes to create gateways between the different tools.
This makes it possible to :
- simplify the simulation process by enabling the exchange of information between different applications and simulation platforms.
- improve simulation engineer productivity by reducing the time and effort needed to transfer data between different tools.
- Securing the product design and launch chain
The Design Thinking Engineering process enables rapid evaluation of the design stages, and quickly “hunts down false ideas” by facilitating the transmission of data from one stage to the next.
For example, simulation engineers can create gateways to transfer data between computer-aided design (CAD) software and simulation tools to create complete digital models. This reduces the time needed to create simulation models, minimizes data transfer errors, and automates production to enable real-time monitoring and updating of simulation models.
In addition, gateways can be used to integrate data from different sources, such as material databases and design standards, to improve the accuracy of simulation models. Simulation engineers can also use gateways to automate repetitive tasks and manage complex data.
Simulation
Simulation software can be used to simulate the behavior of products and systems under different scenarios. They enable designs to be tested and validated before going into mass production. The most popular tools are ANSYS, Abaqus and Comsol. The DAES teams have developed 2 ANSYS-coupled apps for RCC-M and RCC-Mrx.
Project management
For a manufacturer specializing in the design, production and sale of inflatable products, the objective was to analyze the digital design chain. After an initial audit phase including an inventory of the business solutions used (Kangaroo, Grasshoper, Rhino and Abaqus) at each stage, we carried out a benchmark of existing solutions on the market, and evaluated ways of simplifying and then automating data transfers, taking into account the needs of the players in the digital chain.
PYTHON
Development of python codes to optimize the design stages of luxury products integrating micromechanics, fluidics and dynamics previously managed by unrelated applications. For an energy equipment manufacturer, definition and implementation of an integrated business solution enabling all product parameters to be taken into account, including fatigue-related issues.
