Digital Specification Functional Profiles for Traceability
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional approaches to outlining and managing technical specifications in product development are inadequate, leading to ambiguity and a lack of traceability, as they fail to clearly capture complex interactions and load cycles, resulting in potential product failures and costly recalls.
Innovation Solution
A method to generate digital specifications as functional profiles using integrated data points, which can be used as inputs for the DNA Structured Platform (DSP) to create predictive models of a product's operational behavior, facilitating deterministic risk reduction and improved product reliability.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of manufacture
If conventional word-based technical specifications are used, then the specifications can be created and managed easily, but they fail to clearly capture complex interactions and load cycles, leading to ambiguity and lack of traceability
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces traditional word-based specification documents with a digital platform that uses mathematical models and algorithms to represent product requirements, operating conditions, and performance criteria. This substitution transforms ambiguous textual descriptions into precise, computable digital representations that can clearly capture complex interactions and load cycles while maintaining ease of creation through structured data input forms
Solution Approach 2:
The patent transforms specification parameters from static text descriptions into dynamic digital data structures with defined relationships. Operating conditions, performance criteria, and test requirements are represented as interconnected parameters that can be systematically analyzed, traced, and validated, eliminating the ambiguity inherent in conventional word-based specifications
2Device complexity
If word-based specifications are used, then data can be stored in simple files, but interpretation and application by individuals leads to ambiguity and lack of traceability
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces manual interpretation of word-based specifications with an automated digital platform that uses algorithms to consistently apply requirements, operating conditions, and test criteria. This eliminates variability in human interpretation while maintaining systematic organization, ensuring complete traceability from requirements through analysis to test validation without information loss
Solution Approach 2:
The digital platform implements automated feedback mechanisms that track and record how specifications are applied, interpreted, and validated throughout the product development process. This creates an audit trail that maintains full traceability, allowing organizations to trace any decision or test result back to its originating specification requirement
3Adaptability or versatility
If traditional development processes are used, then experience-based methods can be applied, but there is no time for costly trial & error testing with new product developments
Solution Approach 1:
The patent enables preliminary digital analysis and validation of product designs before physical prototyping and testing. By using mathematical models to simulate product behavior under various operating conditions and load cycles, organizations can identify potential failures and optimize designs in the digital domain, eliminating the need for costly and time-consuming trial-and-error physical testing while still applying engineering experience through the modeling process
Data Source
AI summary
A method of generating a digital specification process used for the digitization and graphical representation of a product's design requirements and complex internal and external interactions as a series of signals in what is called a functional profile. This method concurrently represents any number of signals and their interactions, including any number of functional constraints and stress drivers. Using mathematical models in which the digital specification functional profiles are used as inputs, software-based calculation functions capture a product's life under different load profiles with variable and multiple stress factors rather than just a single stress factor.