An experiment to understand how designers consider maintenance

摘要

The aim of this paper is to try to improve the integration of maintenance in the design process. This improvement is led through an identification of the maintenance skills. For this, an experiment is set-up, in which participants have to design a given product. The specifications of the product include maintenance. The characteristics of the maintenance skills are examined through maintenance problems. These problems are followed during all the experiment. They show us how the maintenance specifications are taken into account, how the designers can evaluate maintenance specifications, and lastly how the product is modified with regard of these evaluations.