Requirements for Design Methodology for Local Oriented Manufacturing in Developing Countries

We are studying “Local Oriented Manufacturing” (LOMan) as an approach for achieving social sustainability. LOMan is the concept to focus on the locality of manufacturing and use stages in design and manufacturing. For example, the usage of energy saving technology in developed countries to products for developing countries may lead to a win-win situation. The objective of this research is to propose a design methodology for LOMan. As the first step, this paper clarifies the issues of the design methodology by executing a field survey and case studies. The case studies compare refrigerators and vacuum cleaners in Malaysia and those in Japan. Then, based on these results, this paper proposes a method of knowledge representation for supporting the LOMan design. The method represents situations and circumstances of the product life cycle, a product, and influence of the situation to the product design by using value chain, product information model, and checklist, respectively. The method represents requirements for the LOMan design by the relationship among these three items.