The application of manufacturing culture to the design of Asian region oriented machine tools

During the last years the demand for regionally and culturally harmonised machine design is increasingly on the agenda. The problem of localising products like machine tools instantly poses the question for new procedures that allow including the regional and cultural adaptations into the design processes of machine tool companies. How to transform the general insight into the necessity of culture- and region-adapted technologies and how to embed it into a design procedure comprising applicable design attributes is the crucial problem addressed. The paper shows in an exemplary way how ambiguous design attributes can eventually be embodied in a prototype design. © Springer-Verlag London Limited 2003.