Written by / Design R&D Section Chief Jill Chen, Researcher  Yi-Hsuan Kuo, Researcher Tzu-Hsin Hsieh

 

Under the initiative of Industry 4.0, how can we assist machine tool businesses in facing the transition period of digital transformation?

The trends of globalization, digitalization, and sustainable circulation continue to change the patterns of production and logistics. In addition to differentiating their products from market competitors through product and corporate brand identity design, and developing service and business model innovations, major international smart machinery manufacturers have gradually evolved from an early hardware equipment supply model to providing value-oriented service portfolios in response to market demands for operational optimization and digital transformation.

Taiwan's machinery and equipment industry occupies an important position internationally due to its excellent professional processing technology, combined with the high production flexibility and high cost-performance advantages of industrial clustering. However, with changes in market demand, in addition to requirements for quality, customers also pay more attention to back-end services. At the same time, they must deal with the challenges of corporate operations and employee adaptability during digital transformation. Therefore, relevant domestic legal entities and enterprises are striving to think about how to use design research tools to analyze customer usage behaviors, service gaps, and optimize human-computer interaction design, thinking about problems in customer usage processes from the customer's standpoint to enhance the added value of products.

The Taiwan Design Research Institute cooperated with PMC (Precision Machinery Research and Development Center), focusing on existing technology application product modules as the theme, and introducing design research methods into the service scope of industrial software products. Starting from the issue of overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) visualization services, and proceeding from user needs and scenarios, they conducted co-creation discussions on innovative product services, value propositions, and business model development (Figure 1). In addition to bringing user-centered R&D thinking into the technology development process, they also generated innovative concepts through co-creation to serve as a reference direction for future innovative product and service R&D by legal entities and industries.

Figure 1: Cooperation Framework of the Co-Creation Workshop
(Source: Compiled by the author)

Phase 1: End-User Needs Interviews

Focusing the research direction of the co-creation issue on the problems currently encountered by PMC's products and services, four target operators were invited for interviews to understand the operational workflow context of operators' management execution. From the user mindset of managers and experts, potential needs and obstacles encountered by operators when introducing and using the system were discovered, serving as the research foundation for the user needs focusing workshop (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Bringing the Demand Context of Interview Research into Workshop Discussions
(Source: Compiled by the author)

 

Phase 2: User Problem Focusing

With the feedback from the previous interview data, the co-creation workshop form was used to guide industrial experts and technical engineers to jointly conduct user requirement pain point analysis and user task workflow analysis from the perspective of user experience (including managers and on-site operators). This clarified user values, processes, and functional frameworks, further focusing on directions for prior design intervention, and brainstorming corresponding strategies for pain point needs. Ultimately, six sets of design opportunities were derived, including advisory service systems, interface visualization, incentive mechanism establishment, and real-time information collection and feedback.

The analysis results during the co-creation process can be summarized into six sets of design opportunities:

1. Consulting services for system improvement: How might we help on-site production supervisors through consulting services to improve problems related to system operations or unsmooth processes.
2. Consulting services for decision-making assistance: How might we help corporate high-level management through consulting services to achieve deployment diagnosis and system planning recommendations.
3. Real-time information collection: How might we help on-site production supervisors through real-time information collection and display to improve the problem where data cannot be grasped in real time.
4. Abnormal operation instruction manuals: How might we establish abnormal operation instruction manuals and knowledge bases to help on-site production supervisors improve the problem of difficult technical inheritance for troubleshooting anomalies.
5. Incentive design: How might we design incentives / strengthen usage motivations to help on-site employees / high-level supervisors increase the system usage rate within factories.
6. Interface visualization: How might we help system users through graphics / interface visualization to reduce resistance to system introduction.

Phase 3: Product-Service Development

Continuing the strategic direction defined by problem focusing in the previous stage, target users and services provided by the organization were evaluated from the perspective of Value Proposition (VP), corresponding to gaps and innovative opportunities between demand and supply to deeply develop product-service concepts. Subsequently, through the Business Model Canvas, technical resources, key partners, and channels needed by the organization when developing this product were extended, helping the legal entity think about its own positioning to ensure finding the right target users and reasonable problem-solving strategies.

Figure 3: Live Scene of the PMC Co-Creation Workshop
(Source: Photographed by the author

Using user-centered R&D thinking to find strategic directions for optimizing existing products and services

Through user research and scenario analysis in the co-creation process, this study and PMC jointly proposed three sets of innovative product and service concepts for legal entities and industries as a reference for future new product and service R&D (as shown in Table 1):

Table 1: Key Activities and Resources Required for Innovative Concepts

"Through this cross-domain exchange workshop, integrating design thinking methodologies for the machine tool industry field and exploring future application scenarios for products and services will help inspire the scientific research direction of legal entities to be closer to industrial needs." — Kevin Lee, Vice President of PMC
 

The complete original text is published in "Design and Technology: The Research and Practice of Interdisciplinary Integration Driven Innovation." For purchase, please contact Taiwan Design Research Institute "DesignPin" or Not Just Library.