Human Centered Industry - Emotional Engineering - page 46

Fig. 11 Concurrent
engineering tomorrow
The current industries focus on particular ! final products and operate indepen-
dently. But if we focus on intermediate components, there is much common
knowledge which can be shared across different industries. Therefore, if we change
our focus from ! final products to intermediate components, then our product devel-
opment can be re-structured in such a framework as shown in Fig. 12 . Then, we can
develop ! final products by combining different pieces of intermediate components
just as we do in playing Lego, or to express it in French, in Bricolage style. Lego,
however, is just a combination of shapes, but in this case we have to consider many
attributes at the same time. But the basic idea is the same as that of Lego.
Figure 12 is nothing other than a Neural Network. It is interesting to note that
Neural Network not only represents our brain activities, but it also is analog based.
Such a Neural Network-based product development will bring forth greater fl flexi-
bility and adaptability and allows multi-modal or cross-modal product develop-
ments. And it will bring more emotional satisfaction to our customers.
Fig. 12 Parallel distributed
engineering for multiple
industries