Human Centered Industry - Emotional Engineering - page 47

Neural Network is another name for Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP). New
CE is parallel processing, while traditional CE is single processing. In single pro-
cessing, tasks are processed on a single CPU. In parallel processing, on the other
hand, tasks are processed on multiple CPUs.
Parallel Processing was introduced ! first to increase the processing speed of tasks.
But it was soon recognized that it models our brain activities. Our brain can process
incoming stimuli of different quality at the same time. Thus, the concept of Parallel
Processing was expanded and it soon started to be called Neural Network because it
models neural systems. As is well known, Neural Network is one area of con-
nectionism, which models our mental activities and behaviors in terms of inter-
connected network of simple units.
Emotion is associated with the incoming stimuli and they are very much different
in their qualities. The combination of these various kinds of stimuli motive us to
cognition and motivation. Thus, PDP is also a tool for processing emotions. If we
would like to respond to increasing diversi ! cation of customer expectations, we
have to re-structure our industry framework to adapt to this change. PDP model of
industry framework is expected to be the best choice.
4.5 Modularization
Although PDP model of industry framework was proposed here, there are several
examples in the traditional industry which is basically PDE. But these approaches
are not yet expanded across industries. They are called Modularization and
although its advantage is much touted, their efforts are still within their own
industries and they are not attempting to expand the efforts beyond their domains.
Let us see what examples we have for such an approach called Modularization.
4.5.1 Automotive Industry
Trucks are designed and manufactured in this way since long-time ago. Trucks are
designed and manufactured with a common platform or a common chassis (shown
as C in the ! figure) and cargo body (shown as A in the ! figure) is designed and
manufactured separately to meet customer requirements (Fig. 13 ) . In most cases,
special cargo body is designed and manufactured in another company, which is
different from a truck company producing common chassis. Thus, in the area of
trucks, knowledge and experience are shared across companies, but not across
industries.
Today, many passenger cars introduce the same idea and they share the common
platform for many different models. But the primary purpose of this Modularization
is cost reduction.