**1. Introduction**

186 Reverse Engineering – Recent Advances and Applications

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Due to increased market pressure, product specifications are required to be developed and updated on a rapid and continual basis. Companies know that to compete in the market they must learn to analyze and address the actual arithmetic increase, but to do so at an exponential pace.

Improving a product involves offering new features, new technology and attractive ways to enhance the quality for market launch. Companies are employing and reaping the benefits of market analysis techniques to assist in predicting what the market is postulating, now and in the future.

Customers anxiously await the release of new products, frequently and expeditiously. Many of these customers expect and anticipate that their favorite brand will launch a new product. In fact, frequency of product updates or the potential of model renewal and variety of versions has become another aspect in redefining the concept of a favorite brand.

The rapid pace of consumer demand compels companies to keep their products on the edge of technology and competitive in market place; therefore, their development process can be no less aggressive. To achieve optimum results, the products must be continuously improved, based on customer need.

Dufour (1996) is emphatic that many new products, even if unintended, are in most cases redesigns, based on an existing product. This activity, however, cannot be held solely in intuitive order, depending only on empiricism.

The redesign needs to be done through a systematic process that guides the work of the designer and the product development team from identification of the problem until the final design of the product, offering a greater chance of success.

Integrating Reverse Engineering and Design for Manufacturing

Fig. 2. Publications by keywords between 1980 and 2009

engineering.

and participatory way.

**2. Literature review** 

**2.1 Product development process** 

development (co-design) with customers.

of the research.

and Assembly in Products Redesigns: Results of Two Action Research Studies in Brazil 189

From this main objective on, it is established a secondary objective, to analyze the results from the application of the cited model to reduce production/assembling time, as well as the manufacturing/assembling costs on the redesign of products from the reverse

The employed research method was the action-research. According to Thiollent (2007) an action-research is a kind of an empirically social research, designed and carried out in close association with an action or with solving a collective problem, in which the researches and participants, representatives of the situation or the problem are involved in a cooperative

This chapter is structured as follows: section 2 presents initially a theoretical framework on the subject studied, followed by section 3 which describes the research method employed. Section 4 analyzes and discusses the results and, finally, section 5 presents the conclusions

According to Toledo *et al*. (2008), the product development process (PDP) is considered, increasingly, a critical process to the competitiveness of companies, with a view to a general need for frequent renewal of product lines, costs and development schedules, a more responsive product development to market needs and to companies participating in supplying chain of components and systems, training strategies to participate in joint

Silva (2001) considers that for small and medium companies to be regarded as pioneers in product development, it is not a critical success factor. So, additional scrutiny is applied to the study of manufacture and assembly, the structured assessments of conditions and the productive resources, internally and externally available, as a means of reducing costs and optimizing deadlines for product launching.

As a consequence, the redesign of products, supported by a Reverse Engineering (RE) approach, and integrated Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DFMA) is a way these companies manage to launch new products with minimal investment and risk. A survey in the main scientific databases (Emerald, Science Direct and SciELO) revealed that this issue has generated 178 publications in journals during the period from 1980 to 2009, as shown in Figure 1.

Fig. 1. Publications by keywords in major databases

Figure 2 shows the distribution of these publications within this period, as they are contained in the article title, for the keywords: product redesign; Reverse Engineering; Design for Manufacturing and Assembly; design for manufacturing; design for assembly, and DFMA.

Of note in the analysis is that none of these publications dealt with the integration of RE with DFMA regarding the redesign of products, only with rapid prototyping; thus, this chapter aims to contribute to the knowledge base by filling the gap identified in the literature.

Therefore, the main objective of this study is to analyze the application of a model for the integrated use of the design for manufacturing and the rapid prototyping in a reverse engineering approach in the process of products redesign.

Fig. 2. Publications by keywords between 1980 and 2009

From this main objective on, it is established a secondary objective, to analyze the results from the application of the cited model to reduce production/assembling time, as well as the manufacturing/assembling costs on the redesign of products from the reverse engineering.

The employed research method was the action-research. According to Thiollent (2007) an action-research is a kind of an empirically social research, designed and carried out in close association with an action or with solving a collective problem, in which the researches and participants, representatives of the situation or the problem are involved in a cooperative and participatory way.

This chapter is structured as follows: section 2 presents initially a theoretical framework on the subject studied, followed by section 3 which describes the research method employed. Section 4 analyzes and discusses the results and, finally, section 5 presents the conclusions of the research.
