Learning objectives
Knowledge and understanding: the student will have to demonstrate to know the fundamental principles for the food-oriented product design and the characteristics of the various proposed approaches (e.g.: reverse engineering, QFD, TRIZ, design for sustainability, design for additive manufacturing)
Applying knowledge and understanding: the student must be able to apply the techniques and methods learned, integrating the various aspects in the most proper and appropriate way related to the specific case, in order to set up and develop an innovative food-oriented product project starting from reverse engineering and functional analysis of an existing product
Making judgements: the student must be able to autonomously and critically analyze the main methods of design, to know how to make the most appropriate choices in terms of material selection and application of design principles, in order to develop a concept of own and original product solution
Communication skills: the student must be able to communicate, in a clear and exhaustive way and using all the most appropriate tools (tables, diagrams, spreadsheets, diagrams), the choices made in drafting the project using appropriately the specific technical vocabulary of the tools and the applied methods
Learning skills: the student will be able to act independently in a context of conceptual and detail design, analysis of existing products on the market and solution of inventive problems related to industrial design of food-oriented product
Prerequisites
Although it is not a mandatory prerequisite, the preliminary attendance of the course LABORATORY OF REPRESENTATION of the 1st year is highly recommended
Course unit content
The course presents the main systematic, theoretical and applied approaches to the development of an innovative product, starting from the functional and modular redesign of existing product, including aspects related in particular to environmental sustainability and additive manufacturing and with specific application to a practical case in the food industry.
Full programme
The Course will deepen from the theoretical point of view and with application examples on real case studies the following topics:
- Introduction to the product development process
- Planning of the product
- Analysis of customer needs
- Product specifications
- Functional analysis
- QFD and House of quality
- Methods for stimulating the inventive generation of concepts (TRIZ)
- Analysis of patents
- Decision making and concept selection
- Testing of concepts
- Definition of product architecture
- Criteria for selection of materials
- Virtual prototyping and Reverse engineering
- Design for Additive Manufacturing and 3D printing
- Design by components
- Elements of Green design and Design for sustainability, with focus on food product design.
Any company seminars will be organized according to the availability of interested companies.
Bibliography
All the material presented during the course will be made available to students through the ELLY platform, upon registration.
In addition, you can refer to the following texts for further information:
G.Pahl, W.Beitz, J. Feldhusen, K.H. Grote, “Engineering Design a Systematic Approach”, Springer Verlag London 2007.
K.T. Ulrich, S.D. Eppinger, R. Filippini, “Product design and development”, McGraw-Hill, 7th Edition 2019.
L. Bistagnino, “The outside shell seen from the inside. Design by components”, CEA, 2008
G. Dieter, L. Schmidt, “Engineering design”, McGraw-Hill, 4th edition, 2009
J. Terninko, A. Zusman, B. Zlotin, “Systematic innovation. An introduction to TRIZ (Theory of Inventive Problem Solving)”, Routledge, 1998
V. Fey, E. Rivin, “Innovation on demand: new product development using TRIZ”, Cambridge University Press, 2005
Teaching methods
The Course has a weight of 6 CFU, which correspond to 60 hours of frontal class in the classroom. The didactic activities will be carried out favoring lectures in the classroom, dedicated to the exposure of theoretical methods and applied methods to case studies, alternating with practical exercises, dedicated to the application of reverse engineering techniques to concrete case studies and where students can make use of personal tools such as personal computers for 3D virtual CAD product modeling. Theoretical lessons will be supported by PowerPoint presentations. Both lectures and exercises will involve the interactive involvement of students. The work done during the exercises will serve as a starting point for the group projects to be developed during the course based on the notions learned during the theoretical lessons. In addition to the teaching methods described, if conditions permit, one or more seminars will be organized by food companies in order to report concrete experiences gained in real case studies. The teaching materials used during the lessons will be uploaded on the ELLY platform with weekly frequency. Non-attending students are reminded to check the teaching material available and the instructions provided by the teacher through the ELLY platform.
Assessment methods and criteria
The final examination will be conducted in a collegial format involving all three modules of the course. In particular, the examination will include a written part with closed-ended questions covering the topics discussed in all the modules of the course and an oral part related to the presentation and discussion of a group project in relation to the contents of the course.
The written part will consist of 8 closed-ended questions for the module "Innovative materials for design" (3 CFU), 8 closed-ended questions for the module "Assessment tools for the sustainability of the food system" (3 CFU) and 16 closed-ended questions for the module "Product development methodologies and integrated virtual design" (6 CFU). The final grade for the written part is based on 30: each correct answer corresponds to 1 point, the final grade for the written part that exceeds 30/30 will possibly count towards the award of honours in the overall final exam grade. The written test is considered passed if the number of correct answers exceeds, in each module, a threshold determined as follows: 5 correct answers in the "Innovative materials for design" module, 5 correct answers in the "Assessment tools for food system sustainability" module and 8 correct answers in the "Product development methodologies and integrated virtual design" module.
The oral part will consist of an oral presentation by the group (of 15-25 minutes) aimed at describing a project carried out as a group and with the objective of analysing, disassembling, and functionally dismantling a kitchen appliance with the aim of redesigning it in whole or in part according to the approaches and objectives discussed in the teaching modules, reducing its environmental impact and also realising a formal and/or functional prototype using the appropriate additive techniques. The oral presentation will be followed by oral questions from the lecturers relating to discussing some aspects of the project in more detail and investigating how the course content was applied during the project. The final grade for the oral part will be determined as a weighted average of the partial grades of the individual lecturers, using the number of CFUs relating to the individual modules as weights. The oral examination is considered passed if each lecturer awards a partial mark, relative to his/her module, of at least 18/30.
The final mark for the examination is obtained as the arithmetic mean of the final mark for the written part and the final mark for the oral part.
Other information
2030 agenda goals for sustainable development
