Packaging protects products, keeps their value and reduces waste. This is especially crucial in domains with perishable goods such as food, medicine or cosmetics. But conventional packaging solutions yield negative environmental impacts. In the EU, the largest share of plastics is used for packaging, causing a corresponding footprint. The application of sustainable strategies to packaging should help to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and promote the development of sustainable consumption. In this paper, a review is conducted on research that brings together circular economy, packaging design and cosmetics industry, by systematic literature review and content analysis. In addition to the current standards of conventional packaging, packaging alternatives are presented, which are categorised according to the R-strategies Refuse, Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.

The aim of this paper is to show to how far VR technology can help in the implementation of methods in product development. First, an overview of the product development approach and VR technology is given. Then, an evaluation scheme is developed to examine product development methods for their VR suitability. Finally, the results are evaluated and recommendations for future research are given.

Maintenance decision making is an important part of managing the costs, effectiveness and risk of maintenance. One way to improve maintenance efficiency without affecting the risk picture is to group maintenance jobs. Literature includes many examples of algorithms for the grouping of maintenance activities. However, the data is not always available, and with increasing plant complexity comes increasingly complex decision requirements, making it difficult to leave the decision making up to algorithms.

This paper suggests a framework for the standardisation of maintenance data as an aid for maintenance experts to make decisions on maintenance grouping. The standardisation improves the basis for decisions, giving an overview of true variance within the available data. The goal of the framework is to make it simpler to apply tacit knowledge and make right decisions.

Applying the framework in a case study showed that groups can be identified and reconfigured and potential savings easily estimated when maintenance jobs are standardised. The case study enabled an estimated 7%-9% saved on the number of hours spent on the investigated jobs.

In testing and simulation departments in product development (PD) data types, data structures and data storage are often very different. Exchange of data and information is normally not automated and often not supported by management systems. This can lead to loss of time and information. A literature study in combination with 20 expert interviews and the analysis of documents as well as data storage structures and IT systems in a PD department of a motorcycle manufacturer were performed. Test and simulation processes were classified and standardized, documentation formats analyzed, standards in Test Data Management (TDM) and Simulation Data Management (SDM) as well as verification and validation processes compared. IT support in SDM is better than in TDM. An integration of TDM and SDM could lead to improved collaboration between testing and simulation departments. Options for this integration could be specific ontologies, object-oriented interfaces, a higher-level intermediate application, use of a common standard or integration of one standard into another one.

Smart manufacturing enterprises rely on adapting to rapid engineering changes while minimizing the generated risk. Making informed decisions related to engineering changes and managing risks against unexpected costs requires more information to be extracted from limited data. However, limited information in early-stage design can come in many forms, namely text and images. The development of innovative design tools and processes to link multisource data together is essential to assist designers in building model-based engineering (MBE) systems. However, the formal computational linking of multisource data is yet to be realized in MBE. We propose a framework to implement transfer learning and integrate domain specific knowledge to bridge this information gap. A synthetic dataset is created using web scraping techniques based on keywords extracted from the requirements. Requirement-image pairs are used to fine tune a contrastive language-image pretraining model to acquire domain knowledge. The results demonstrate how the content of images can be used to indicate all affected requirements for tracing engineering changes in a complex system.

Occupational therapists modify mass-produced and universally-designed assistive technologies (ATs) to fulfill the specific needs of people with disabilities. We interviewed ten occupational therapists with experience in modifying ATs in order to understand adaptation processes. Our findings reveal the reasoning behind adaptation, common ATs that require adaptation, as well as the collaborative nature of adaptation. We propose a new framework called Adaptable Universal Design (AUD) that blends Universal Design with the need to adapt ATs in order to fulfill unique and specific user needs.

With an increasing demand for product individualisation leading to increased product architecture complexity and -costs, modular kits are one common measure to cope with this issue. The management of such a modular kit as well as the methodical determination of a specific product variant is key to the manufacturer's success. As multiple influence factors need to be taken into account when configuring product variants, we propose a multi-dimensional geometric optimisation algorithm, allowing for prioritising varying customer demands and thereby determining the ideally balanced product variant.

Novel products are commonly realized by integrating heterogeneous technologies. Product architecting focus on defining the scheme by which the product functions are allocated to physical components. A DSM-based clustering method that integrates technical complexity and strategic concerns has previously been proposed. It has been shown that interaction weights in the DSM may affect the clustering result. A complexity-based interaction strength model to be used in DSM clustering is proposed here. The case study gives promising results from both interaction performance and safety points of view.

Systems thinking is vital for engineering of nowadays systems characterized by system spanning interactions and an incresing amount of functions. Systems Engineering (SE) represents an interdisciplinary approach, gaining extensive attention to cope with increasing system complexity. Implementation of SE in existing organizations and processes, however, is facing challenges. As a matter of course there is not out of the box concept to be used, in fact definitions and understandings seem to be based on the background and experience of the individual or organization und differ widely. Thus, motivations and expectations of practitioner are manifold and support to adapte and implement SE-methodolgies is needed. Research presented in this contribution picks up the need to provide orientation for individuals, engineering teams and project managers when implementing SE and to address the specific context in that engineering is carried out. Objective is to describe the core idea of SE by a consistent set of principles. This set is used to build up a context specific understanding of SE as a foundation to introduce new methods and procedures in existing method ecosystems.

Among additive manufacturing processes, wire arc additive manufacturing (WAAM) is one of the most promising methods for manufacturing complex near-net-shape parts, as it allows the layer-by-layer deposition of welded material at a high deposition rate. However, this technology is highly dependent on deposition conditions and thermomechanical phenomena during the process. Therefore, process simulation could be used to analyse the effects of different deposition parameters on the thermomechanical results to optimise the process. However, as the computing time required for this study may become prohibitive, a dedicated strategy is needed to reduce it while maintaining a good level of accuracy. In this study, only the thermal analysis of the process is investigated. An efficient metamodel based on B-spline entities is developed to emulate the thermal response of the WAAM process when building a mild steel four-layer wall structure. Thanks to B-spline entities, the temperature profile at different locations is approximated as a function of a subset of deposition parameters of WAAM process, and the results are compared with the simulated temperature profile resulting from a validation dataset.

Additive Manufacturing (AM) provides significant opportunities for design and functional integration of parts and assemblies. Compared to conventional processes, the AM principle increases design freedom notably. Additionally, numerous processible materials and hybrid processes enable the implementation in different industries, spanning from aerospace over automobile until medical applications.

However, there are still handicaps to be addressed, arising from the large diversity of AM principles, post-processing and quality assurance issues, partly insufficient user knowledge, and organizational aspects. Coherently, lacking requirements specification hinders a successful consideration of AM in the early stages of development, and its later implementation.

To promote knowledge build-up, this contribution presents a requirements specification framework, which supports developers in determining demands throughout the development process, including those resulting from post-processing and testing operations. By incorporating thorough analyses of general organizational and resort overarching limitations, this contribution promotes a successful implementation of suitable AM strategies.

Industry is a main stakeholder when it comes to realising the transition towards a sustainable future. Academia, with its, knowledge and methods, needs to support the industry on this journey. This paper, focuses on the practical learnings on how to implement sustainability research from an industrial perspective. It aims to share some lessons learnt from a longitudinal case study and a development journey in implementing sustainability research in the product innovation process at GKN Aerospace Engine System. The paper gives an overview, based on a literature study, of what is required to successfully implement sustainability in product development. It also provides a summary of the different research projects at the company with learnings from practical and academic perspectives, and the main learnings and changes in relation to different development phases in the sustainability journey. Although, this journey began over ten years ago, and shows the importance of long-term collaboration, it provides key-factors that can be applied also in short term collaborations and for faster implementation of research in general and sustainable product development research in particular.

The concept of involving user perspectives into product development processes has its roots in the early 1960s. Although this seems to be following a quite long tradition, as a design research field, it did not improve substantially and, so far, no consistent perception or even definition of the concept can be found. The paper points out where design research on user involvement still lacks methodological and theoretical foundation and makes the attempt of providing impulses for systemizing the existing body of knowledge within the Design Society as a research community.

Visual representation of product architecture models is crucial in complex engineering systems design. However, when the number of entities in a model is large and when multiple levels of hierarchies are included, visual representations currently in use need to be more intuitive. As such, improved visual representations that enable better system overview and better communication of essential product- related information among design participants are needed. This paper uses interactive information visualisation techniques – collapsible hierarchical tree, edge bundling and alluvial diagram – and provides the foundations of a computerised tool that improves the traceability of connections between design domains, including stakeholders, requirements, functions, behaviours and structure. The case of a cleaning robot is used as an illustrative example. The approach supports designers by providing an enhanced overview during the development of complex product architecture models, in particular in the communication with external stakeholders, in the identification of change propagation paths across several design domains, and in capturing the design rationale of previous design decisions.

Collaborations between design engineers and bioscientists offer novel opportunities that could help solving some of the biggest challenges organisations and societies are facing. Combining design and bioscience has the potential to create responsible and desirable products/services, however such ventures come with challenges rising from boundaries between practices. This research explores boundary objects as sources of framing in multidisciplinary collaborations. The results are based on a descriptive study with synthetic biologists and design engineers working on an innovation-driven task.

This study undertakes a systematic analysis of literature within Circular Economy (CE) in an industrial perspective, with a focus on understanding the consideration of the biological and technological cycles, as well as dual circularity. The paper articulates the key research differences, gaps and trends on the basis of publication evolution, key subject areas, influential journals and keywords co-occurrence mapping. The analysis shows the increasing publication trend with dominance of technological cycle and a wide variety of subject areas incorporated in CE biological, technological and dual cycles. Due to the multidisciplinary and transversal nature of CE, as well as its diverse interpretation and applications, an expansion and consolidation of the subject areas and journals are expected in the years to come. Analysis of co-occurrence on the authors' keywords underlined a limited focus of a business perspective research within the biological cycle, heterogeneous and proactive technological cycle but fragmented research on dual circularity. Further analysis of synergies and limitations is necessary to enhance business effectiveness towards enhanced sustainability.

With the broader industrial application of Additive Manufacturing (AM), designers are facing new challenges in conceptual design for AM. To better understand the problematic, the authors organised a design workshop with six experts in AM. The paper presents the results of the conducted design workshop and discusses the current and future trends in research on the conceptual design for AM.

Sketching and prototyping are parts of a ‘reflective conversation with materials of a design situation’ (Schön, 1992). To support this conversation, we developed a reflective tool -the Reflection Canvas- that facilitates reflection activities through sketching and prototyping on the one hand and verbalisation on the other. We introduced the reflective tool to design students. Based on observation and answers from a questionnaire data reveal that guided reflection structured the process in a helpful way. It also turned out students had difficulties to switch from visualisation to verbalisation.

Creativity is crucial in design. In recent years, growing computational methods are applied to improve the creativity of design. This paper aims to explore an approach to generate creative design images with specific feature or design style. A Generative Adversarial Network model is applied in the approach to learn the specific design style. The target products will be projected into the latent space of model to transfer their styles and generate images. The generated images combine the features of the specific design style and the features of the target product. In the experiment, the approach using the generated images to inspire the human designer to generate the creative design in according styles. According to the primary verification by participants, the generated images can bring novelty and surprise to participants, which gain the positive impact on human creativity.

Engineering designers are encouraged to consider relevant contextual factors throughout their design processes. However, specific practices for incorporating context into design processes are lacking in the existing literature, and curricula related to the use of context during design processes is limited. As a preliminary step toward characterizing novice engineering designers' use of contextual factors, we qualitatively coded 10 mechanical engineering capstone design reports for contextual factors; half of the projects had domestic sponsors with varying themes, and the other half of the projects had international sponsors with a global health theme. Our findings showed that teams considered technological and institutional factors most frequently; other factors were considered less frequently. Global health themed design teams considered more contextual factors than non-global health themed teams. There was considerable variability among the contextual factors considered, as well as the stages during which they were considered. These outcomes have the potential to inform the development of pedagogical tools to support the acquisition of skills related to formally addressing context during engineering design processes.