The Contribution of Design to the Development of Products and Manufacturing Processes in the Portuguese Industry (original) (raw)

2019, Procedia Manufacturing

The aim of this work is to contribute to the new perspective of modernization of Portuguese manufacturing SMEs, evaluating innovation through design and its contribution to the improvement of development of products and manufacturing processes, as well as, to demonstrate how design thinking is a useful tool in manufacturing engineering. The survey will allow a new approach to the improvement of Industrial design in SMEs, as well provide evaluation tools of the company's and promote innovation systems. Through mapping the fundamental processes, it was possible to group these routines into three dimensions, production, interactivity and through the impact on the economic system. For this work were validated 17 SMEs in the inquiries, that represents the sample. The main findings of the survey was, among others, 14% of the SMEs tend to perform external design contests, 43% of the analyzed SMEs create partnerships with schools, less than half of the surveyed companies use sources that allow direct interaction with the market, 43% of SMEs have a designer as responsible for the creation of its products; 18% say that their products reflect a Portuguese identity, 43% of the companies have defined the launching dates of new products and 21% considers innovation as the motor element in the company strategy. With these results it was possible to understand where the Portuguese SMEs, which are mostly manufacturing SMEs, are stand towards innovation through design. A draft of a grid to assess the modernization criteria of Portuguese SMEs through design is presented, to propose a useful tool for the modernization of manufacturing Portuguese SMEs.