An Activity Centered Design framework for Determining Design Decision Levels in Production Systems

Conference contribution, 2016

This paper presents the ACD3-Production framework – a twodimensional model whose purpose is to visualize and clarify the scope, impact and organizational position of design decisions. The abbreviation stands for Activity-Centered Design Decision Determination and is based on a similar framework for product development that supports design decision-making in product design. The framework characterizes design problems along the two dimensions of Abstraction levels and Design perspectives; it is postulated that design decisions are made at the intersection of these, and that the production system’s overarching purposes will propagate coherently down to the physical detailed design level if the design work follows the top-down process indicated in the framework. ACD3-Production is visually represented in the form of a matrix that can facilitate discussions between design change agents, in order to determine where in the production system there are problems, where specific effects are desired, and where to implement a design change.