CAREER: Giving You 'Almost' What You Want - Customizing Products Through the Integration of Market Modeling and Engineering Design

The research objective of this Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award is to test the hypothesis that improving the integration of preference modeling and engineering design can lead to customized products better suited to respond to heterogeneous markets and changing needs. While mass customization - providing customers with exactly what they want - has seen significant failures, competitiveness in a global market requires balancing targeted product architectures with consumer-customizable components. Research tasks are identified that will advance how engineers: 1) utilize consumer preferences; 2) manage system flexibility; and 3) implement system reconfigurability. The educational objectives engage in activities that focus on the multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and systems-level education of current and future engineers. These objectives are achieved in part by: 1) introducing computer-based multidisciplinary design optimization problems in a pilot study at four high schools; and 2) working toward an undergraduate general education thematic track in interdisciplinary design.

If successful, this research will allow American manufacturing enterprises to identify markets where giving a customer 'almost' what they want - through personalization (done by the manufacturer) and customization (done by the consumer) - can deliver maximum value. Further, by understanding how component properties influence system reconfigurations, viable markets and core technologies for reconfigurability will be defined. The educational objectives will create a design thread that extends from high school through graduate school. Applying multidisciplinary simulations in secondary education is a first step toward producing engineers with interdisciplinary competency, and will be used to promote diversity in engineering by shedding light on today's societal challenges. At the collegiate level, engineering students will get focused exposure to interdisciplinary topics, while students outside of engineering will be exposed to principles of product design. As NC State currently has no engineering classes available for general education credit, this thematic track will have campus-wide effects.