Industry 4.0 Impact on Evolution of Product Development: The Bicycle Saddle Case Study

The emerging new technologies, rapid change of market demand, and the influence of society moved the companies to be innovative and improve their product as continuously as effectively. Consequently, the need for smart manufacturing systems and smart products arises to support the manufacturer to deal with mass customization under a highly competitive market. The Industry 4.0 initiative provides a base toward smart manufacturing, aimed at producing the smart and highly connected product. Regarding this necessity, in this thesis, the role of Industry 4.0 technologies in product development processes are examined, supposing the product an Industry 4.0 component in its life cycle. A roadmap can be a good representation to illustrate the impacts of Industry 4.0 in enhancing product development. To do so, the roadmap of developing a customized bike saddle is described as the case study for this investigation. As in reality, the saddle comfort depends on many factors including the rider anatomy. Therefore, it raises the necessity of profound customization to satisfy user needs. Applying artificial intelligence techniques such as data mining for market research, deep learning for customized design, and additive manufacturing technologies such as stereolithography 3D printing in customized manufacturing, are demonstrations of Industry 4.0 technologies in the case study.