A GAMIFIED LEARNING SIMULATION FOR SUSTAINABLE PRODUCT REDESIGN DECISION-MAKING IN MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS

inglese

The transition from linear to circular production models requires engineers who can recognise how early design decisions affect the whole life cycle of a product. This thesis designs a gamified learning activity that supports the teaching of sustainable product redesign in manufacturing systems, using a football shin guard as a case study. The work addresses how such an activity can make the life-cycle consequences of redesign decisions understandable while keeping their technical evaluation transparent. Based on the principles of sustainable manufacturing, the circular economy and the 6R framework, four redesign principles are translated into a structured decision exercise of five levels, each presenting three alternatives with different technical consequences. The 15 alternatives are assessed against explicit criteria, and the assessment is kept separate from the gamified layer of feedback, scores, progression and badges, whose thresholds are derived from the distribution of all 243 possible pathways. The sustainability perspective is then extended to the production stage through a statistical quality control plan for the thickness of the shell, including the choice of the control charts, the sizing of subgroups with operating characteristic curves and the relationship between process variability and non-conforming product. Finally, the thesis presents a working prototype of one level built with Lumi and proposes a roadmap for implementing the activity in Moodle with standard tools, together with a plan for its future validation with students.