More than 15 years after the publication of the agile manifesto of software development, agile development approaches have also reached the processes of physical product development. Because of the boundary conditions and requirements here, which differ strongly from those of pure software development, these approaches often reach their limits. However, research and practice have quickly recognized that hybrid approaches integrate the strengths of agile and plan-driven development. This paper presents 25 hybrid development approaches that have been identified in a Systematic Literature Review.

One challenge within idea management of the front end of the design process is the handling of radical ideas, meaning ideas with a high degree of novelty. Companies are approaching radical and incremental ideas frequently with the same methods, although many reasoned claims exists for treating ideas differently according to the degree of novelty. The paper aims to address the fact that ambidexterity does not play any specific role in the front end. Therefore, a framework of an extended idea process model based on the idea of ambidexterity is shown and initial test results are presented.

Reflection is understood as an integral part of designing and design processes. Despite the high relevance and an ongoing discussion about agile engineering, we found that reflection is rarley established in industrial practice. There is a need for an approach structuring the wide range of levels, stakeholders, objects and timing of reflections. The introduced RECAP framework is an important step towards a guideline (heuristic) for reflection in engineering projects. Based on the four dimensions objectives, stakeholders, objects, and processes it supports structured planning of reflection.

In the digital era, products’ forms do not necessarily follow their function. Design fixation may happen when a designer attempts to generate diverse concepts. New design heuristics for digital design were extracted to support designers in the early conceptual design stage. Ten design heuristics were extracted from 998 RedDot award-winning concept designs (2013-2017) through a five-step process. It was preliminarily tested by four practitioners and proved to have positively influenced their conceptual design.

A new way of structuring and interpretation of multiple domain matrix is proposed as the basis for categorisation of design parameter relations complexity. Depending on the kind and the degree of coupling of the parameters, the developed methodology activates the appropriate coloured Petri net (CPN) models for semi-automatic support of communication between the members of the design team. The proposed extension of MDM combined with CPN is a novel approach to predicting and managing communication patterns necessary during teamwork coordination on critical interfaces between product components.

The paper suggests an innovative design research and intervention approach using a poststructuralist organizational education perspective. The potential of a high impact trans-epistemic design process is shown for the field of industry 4.0 and the specific context of cognitive assistive systems (CASs). The multi-layered approach addresses the design of technical, social and educational complexity to implement CASs sustainably on the shopfloor and exploit their potential in industry 4.0. Finally, we will shed light on how the approach can enhance deep organizational transformation in industry.

This paper proposes an analytical framework for estimating the domain where a type of technology can be used in a system. In order to achieve this aim, we have elaborated on the concepts of technology critical, technology sensitive, and the technology comfort zone, to analytically assess the impact of a new technology in the early phases of system design. The result is a general method to indicate the range of requirements that can result in valid designs. This tool can assist in the decision-making processes for technology portfolio selection based on sustainable principles.

Introducing more customized products causes complexity costs, which are hard to estimate and measure. Researchers and practitioners have therefore developed approaches to measure these costs. This paper reviews the current approaches and reveals a lack of a holistic view on the underlying problem and, hence, deficits to certain economic questions. We therefore suggest using the Extended Axiomatic Design (EAD) framework as an interdisciplinary model that adresses the economic consequences of variety-induced complexity.

This paper reviews the literature on risk management practices and methods in product design and development. Based on an expert workshop by the Risk Management Processes and Methods in Design Special Interest Group within the Design Society and literature review, three key areas are discussed: risk identification, assessment, and mitigation. In each area, researchers have described practices that are used in product development organizations, proposed new methods to support risk management processes and decision-making, and generated evidence to evaluate the effectiveness of these activities.

Many companies face a challenge while defining their individualized digitalization strategy. Therefore, the interrelation of corporate and digitalization strategy is addressed and a novel procedure model to assist companies in defining their strategy is introduced. Based on their corporate strategy, the introduced model allows companies to simply identify suitable business model patterns, digitization use cases and offers a possibility to asses the maturity level of their internal processes and evaluate the added value from an economic point of view.

When developing new systems, there is always some kind of reference to existing systems. Various approaches aim at describing qualitatively different characteristics of such connections, often depicted as some form of variation. Among other things, this is done with regard to innovation potential and development risk. In this paper, we investigate the extent to which established methods of risk management refer to modelling approaches for variations by means as mentionend above. After a litertaure search 11 methods and method clusters are analyzed more in detail within a method benchmark.

Today high quality and low product development turnaround time are company-wide priorities. Quality supporting processes such as an effective risk management system shall support continuous business running and meeting the goals of an organization. In this paper, an approach is presented on how to integrate the product risk management in Product Lifecycle Management for configured products by definition of an additional software module and its implementation.

Complex products and shorter development cycles lead to an increasing number of engineering changes. In order to be able to process these changes more effectively and efficiently, this paper develops a description model as a first step towards a data driven approach of processing engineering change requests. The description model is systematically derived from literature using text mining and natural language processing techniques. An example of the application is given by an automated classification based on similarity calculations between new and historic engineering change requests.

As digitalisation progresses, the demands placed on companies are increasing at all stages of the product generation process. In order to address these requirements and maintain economic strength, companies must implement innovative and intelligent technologies. Small and medium-sized enterprises in particular are confronted with various obstacles, the overcoming of which is addressed by the “Potential Model” presented in this publication.

Industrial automotive development differs significantly from ideal agile conditions. Complex development structures, interlinkages between teams and non-functional physical dependencies between components result in agile constraints of scale and physicality. This qualitative study researches the influence of the product integration process on these constraints. The results show, that automotive integration characteristics such as duration, frequency, scope and transparency fail agile requirements and therefore cause constraints. Alternatives regarding IT and process design are discussed.

Increasing complexity of products and design processes leads to intensive collaboration of different stakeholders in technical product development. This causes a demand for suitable methods of collaboration across department interfaces, as between design and simulation. The paper investigates typical barriers of collaboration at this interface and measures to overcome them. Methods of complexity management form links based on literature and empirical data from online surveys and interview studies. The framework uses a set of structural metrics to analyse collaboration networks systematically.

Aviation strives today to include environmental and social considerations as drivers for decision making in design. This paper proposes a serious game to raise awareness of the value and cost implications of being ‘sustainability compliant’ when developing aerospace sub-systems and components. After describing the development of the game, from needfinding to prototyping and testing, the paper discusses the results from verification activities with practitioners, revealing the ability of the game to raise sustainability awareness and support negotiation across disciplinary boundaries in design.

With design methodologies, as Integrated Product Development, industry is continuously looking to improve their product development processes. Staying ahead concurrence forces them to deliver new and more complex products in shorter time. When it comes to fast delivery and requirement changes, product development can be inspired by agile methods. Although the application is difficult, the idea to implement these methods for development of products other than software comes out. To ease its implementation, this paper proposes to use IPD as a framework for agile product development.

Over the last two decades, a concept called Digital Twin has evolved rapidly. Yet, there is no unified definition of the term. Based on a literature study and an industrial case study, an overarching definition of Digital twins is presented. Three characteristics were identified – representation of a physical system, bidirectional data exchange, and the connection along the entire lifecycle. Further, three sub-concepts are presented, namely: Engineering Twin, Production Twin, and Operation Twin. The presented paper thus formulates a consistent and detailed definition of Digital Twins.

As the benefits and potentials of agile approaches become increasingly clearer, also hardware product development seeks to apply those methods and procedures. However, mechatronic hardware products are often subject to stricter safety regulations so that a consequent risk management is essential. This paper presents a risk management method suitable for agile product development projects. The method together with an adapted agile procedure were applied and evaluated in a successful industrial case study. This lead to the extended application of agile approaches in other parts of the company.