New Representation Techniques For Designing in a Systemic Perspective

Global production is challenging industrial production to generate solutions that adequate global production to a local systemic conditions. In some case the challenge consists in producing highly individualised and localised solutions, which require new forms of cooperation with local actors, including local service providers and final users. In some case the level of involvement requested to the new actors is high, they can therefore be considered as co-workers in the production of the final solution and the overall view of the production system should be extended to include them as co-producers.
This represents a paradigm shift both for industrial organization and for designers, who will need new tools to analyse and design the system, but find adequate forms of representation to codify knowledge within the new production system.
This paper will emphasise the relevance of those issues in the design activity and outline the main methodological problems to be addressed. The authors will then offer a contribution in this area by providing an overview of different methods and tools used in previous research projects and teaching activities.