This paper provides an overview of established approaches for function integration in additive manufacturing and critically compares their capabilities. One of the decisive factors is how functions and structures are addressed. This is necessary because function integration - among many others - affects material decisions and the manufacturing process chain. It is one of many reasons to rethink the product architecture and a way to support the design of resource-efficient products. Various strategies for function integration exist. However, there are currently no approaches in additive manufacturing that provide systematic support for early function integration.

A systematic literature review identified 21 unique approaches. All approaches were categorized according to their abstraction level within a product architecture and their design type to be supported. They were then compared on the basis of their categorization, design objective and strategy for function integration to allow for a better understanding of when to use the approaches in research and practice. Key findings and considerations for adapting function integration approaches to early design stages are presented. In addition, several research gaps were identified.

Product development is time-consuming and cost-intensive. Part of the costs can be attributed to physical tests. Therefore, new methods are being researched to save resources. One upcoming area that becomes important for the industry is Virtual Reality (VR) technology.

In the state of research studies have already compared VR with methods such as CAD visualizations. However, there is a need for research regarding the comparison to physical models.

Therefore, a comparative study between a physical system and a VR system is evaluated in terms of functional analysis. The study task was to analyze the mechanism of a lawn sprinkler. For evaluation, a function explanation in a final interview was used.

Although more different representations were possible with VR, there was no general improvement. This could be because movements were more difficult to visualize and recognize. The VR application is very suitable if you mainly have to look at systems that are difficult to view in reality. For example, some physical systems may be challenging to see in operation or may not allow a physical cut, so VR can be a solution. The advantages of physical systems can be in using other impressions, such as a feeling of certain forces.

A component-orientated approach is commonplace in the automotive industry where the development focus lies on components. However, current challenges in the industry necessitates a mindset change in the development. Shifting the perspective from the components to functions can help with changing requirements, manage increasing complexity, support cross-disciplinary development, and foster innovation. To successfully implement this approach, it is essential to address not only the technical aspects of the solution, but also the human and organizational aspects affecting the process for its long-term success.

This paper investigates the function-oriented development methods of complex mechatronic products. A systematic literature review is conducted to analyse the current state of research. The existing function-oriented development approaches are summarized, the technological, human, and organizational perspectives are analysed, and the research gaps are highlighted. It is concluded that while function-orientation gains significance in industry and academia, and the importance of human and organizational factors are highlighted in the literature, they are not yet widely considered within the current function-oriented approaches.

Additive manufacturing (AF) is characterised by a high degree of individuality and flexibility with regard to design and product layout. This enables the integration of different functions in a component. Due to these properties, AM has established itself in medical technology for the production of implants. Depending on the application, parameters such as resilience, biocompatibility and manufacturing restrictions play a varying role. So far, however, only limited research has been done on the design, manufacturing and application of hybrid implants (use of several materials). Although initial design and manufacturing guides exist, the problem of removing the hybrid implant from the shaping negative is hardly addressed.

The aim is to analyse and evaluate an existing procedure for the design of hybrid implants depending on individual requirements and to further develop it regarding the removability from the shaping negative. In this context, the extent to which the adhesive properties between the elements can be influenced by design changes is to be investigated.

Lattice structures are lightweight and possess other unique mechanical and physical properties. Additive manufacturing techniques are often used to produce these structures. Additive manufacturing provides manufacturing freedom that significantly surpasses the one provided by conventional subtractive manufacturing. However, a gap exists between the manufacturing freedom and the geometric modelling freedom in additive manufacturing: it can be extremely challenging to model the designed part because of its high geometric complexity, such as heterogeneous lattice structures. While several tools on the market allow geometric modelling of such structures available on the market, the customization of lattice parameters can still be significantly improved. Moreover, no open-source tools exist to address this issue or to model lattice structures in general. This work presents a novel open-source library for the geometric modelling of lattice structures with customized parameters. The parameter customization is enabled with the function representation approach.

Product development is facing new challenges due to increasingly complex and individualized products in small batch sizes and short time to markets at high quality standards. Integrated product data management along with systematic requirements engineering and early stakeholder involvement are known to be key enablers for the success of future product development. In software development, established platforms such as GitHub exist, which have been shown to improve stakeholder communication, requirements elicitation, and software design decisions. In product development, similar platforms exist with impressive functionality, but which have some drawbacks such as closed source licenses, vendor-specific data formats, and expert-level user interfaces. To overcome the current situation, we study how the ideas of GitHub can be translated to an open source solution for product development and which concepts can be reused or must be changed. Core deliverables of our work are (1) an integrated data model of requirements (or design tasks), project schedules, and revisions of computer-aided design (CAD) models as well as (2) an interface model.

The replacement of conventional material with recyclates affects product personality, particularly regarding sustainability aspects influencing consumer behaviour. A definition of personality for products made of recyclates is missing in literature. As these products require appropriate aesthetics based on material origin to communicate the advantage concerning sustainability, there is a need for research in this regard. This paper aims to develop an adequate personality of a reusable water bottle made of ocean plastic by collecting personality traits that evoke associations related to the material's origin and sustainability. We conducted two quantitative field studies. Study 1 collected associated visual perceived attributes and context-related personality traits in order to develop and visualize a preliminary design. Study 2 evaluated the design regarding associated personality traits. The overall outcome was a product personality scale consisting of 23 items plus a concrete design recommendation for a water bottle made of recycled ocean plastic. The assessment of degree of sustainability was strongly influenced by participants’ associations with personal use, familiarity with usage and the factor of stability and resilience.

Today, eco-innovation is a major challenge for companies. This new innovation approach requires to renew current practices to meet new societal and environmental issues. To do this, more and more companies create innovation laboratories to support them in this process, by providing different tools and methods adapted to their needs. To integrate eco-innovation in these new spaces, tools must answer to differents criteria. The only tool proposed by the literature is the guidelines tool but by confronting it with current practices, limits of this tool and of the innovation laboratory practices were defined. In this paper we will question and deconstruct guidelines tool in order to propose a new vision of it through identification of eco-innovation attributes.

Design and engineering are socio-technical enterprises used to solve real-world problems. However, students in these fields are often under-equipped to consider the ethical and societal implications of their work. Our prior work showed that these societal considerations are more consistently embedded in design pedagogy in non-engineering than in engineering courses at MIT. Here, we examine underlying causes for this through a survey of instructors (231 courses from 29 departments). The main contribution of this work is an analysis of whether and how instructors incorporate social, ethical, and policy considerations in design pedagogy. The majority of respondents (60.6%) included these topics in their courses, primarily through discussion of social justice, identity groups, and ethics. These concepts were included more in non-engineering courses (65.8%) than engineering courses (46.9%). Many instructors, especially in engineering, cited irrelevance as the reason for not engaging with these topics in their courses (86.1% compared to 44.2% in non-engineering). We suggest that instructors question this perception and use the examples provided as a starting point to explore integration of these concepts into their technical content.

Aiming to decouple value creation from resource consumption, the Circular Economy is considered an alternative to the current linear model of production and consumption. Among the innovative circular business models, Product-Service Systems (PSS) have been recognized as a possible route to achieve enhanced sustainability performance through the extension of product lifespans and the reduction of product substitution. However, PSS may lead to rebound effects due to less careful behavior during the use phase, which compromises product durability. Currently, the effect of non-ownership models on product care is not yet fully understood, nor are the strategies that could enable better product care. This research aims to deeper comprehend the consumer-product relationships in PSS solutions, as well as to shed light on the potential role of emotional durability in PSS development for product attachment. In order to do so, this paper analyses twelve Product-Service System cases derived from a systematic literature review, categorizing the emotional attachment strategies in each case, and identifying how these strategies might hinder or potentialize PSS solutions.

Prototyping strategies and technology often focus on reducing the fabrication time and cost between design iterations, however, there is limited knowledge about the specific characteristics of change that prototyping strategies aim to impact. To investigate, and better understand these characteristics, this study curates and systematically analyses a representative dataset of 50 'real-world' prototype samples. The study aims to explore the various elements that constitute a design change and to determine their impact on the scale of volumetric change detected. The results highlight emergent patterns and correlations between study metrics to better understand the reasons for design change and the frequency and scale of changes detected in the sample dataset. Findings reveal that the purpose of a design change is, in certain cases, highly correlated to the scale of change affected, and that some changes are more prevalent in the dataset than others, with an average volumetric difference of 4.2% between sample versions detected. The study provides an initial characterisation of prototype change to guide iterative prototyping processes and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of design iterations.

Virtual reality (VR) has been widely used in engineering design in different ways. It has the potential to enhance some design aspects, such as visualization and interaction, but might be incapable of solving the others. There are no consensus or general guidelines on how VR can facilitate design processes. This paper aims to understand how VR is currently used in engineering design at an early stage, so that researchers and practitioners can better know when and how to use VR for efficient design activities. Specifically, this paper reviews the research questions and applications addressed by using VR technology. The study helps identify the design questions currently studied, and gaps to be filled in order to use VR effectively for optimal design outcomes. This review also provides guidelines about when and how to use VR in design research and practices.

The breadth of media and approaches used when prototyping are vast, with each holding inherent properties that vary their suitability for a given prototyping activity.

While several have established classifications of types and purposes of prototypes, there is little by way of guidance for designers on how select and strategise prototyping given their activity needs, or how the prototype chosen may influence their process, success or efficiency.

This paper presents nine affordances of prototypes derived from literature, together characterising the properties of prototyping media or approaches that affect their suitability across prototyping activities.

The affordances are illustrated through application to physical and digital classes of prototypes and four real prototype cases, showing descriptive capability, inherent differences between the media, and enabling direct and consistent comparison.

By mapping affordances across many media and approaches, this work enables better method selection to align with activity needs, better description and comparison of media and approaches, and the ability the broadly interrogate and direct future development of prototyping technologies.

This research elaborates the engineering design of high value low volume (HVLV) artefacts (aka Capital goods, investment goods). Our goal is to describe what information needs the practitioners have when doing sales engineering and engineering in HVLV projects. The research approach uses Design Research Methodology with four company cases.

Our findings are that engineering design of HVLV artefacts reuses several module systems, module libraries, technology catalogues, engineering-to-order and variety of design support systems, configurators, design guidelines, parametric models and lean-based design reasoning patterns etc. This poses major challenges for the engineers; how to use all relevant information and how to find it from different IT-systems.

This study indicates that in HVLV context such engineering strategy is required, which guides and drives tactical and operational engineering decisions not only within a project delivery but across project deliveries. Operative and tactical engineering is done during the delivery project and value capture is not achieved in full potential if the engineering strategy is neglected or overruled. This is challenge for current modularisation and ETO-methods and tools.

During coronavirus time, academic organisations and education institutions have been faced to amazing and radical changes from one day to the other of their teaching contexts, practices, materials and standards and so on. Due to pandemic, in many countries professors, teachers, educators have been obliged to switch on remote education and teaching models with numerous virtual and digital solutions that at the beginning were more or less efficient and professional based. The paper will present a experiment feedback for large hybridation of technology and engineering curriculum for bachelor degree in French higher education system. The educational content and platform has been developed by the consortium of 14 different universities and higher education institutions. In the global topics covered by the project, a specific focus will be given in the paper on subject dealing with engineering design, systems engineering and sustainanibility.

The basis for developing future products in the automotive industry is finding creative and innovative solutions. Ideas can be found by means of creativity methods that support product developers throughout the creative process. Product developers are provided with a variety of different and new methods. This leads to a “method jungle” in which it is difficult for product developers to find the most suitable path. The successful use of methods in product development goes hand in hand with the acceptance and implementation of the methods. Despite the added value, only a low use is observed in the development process. The field of Creativity Support Tools also offers a wide variety of different tools that support the creativity process. Although a chasm exists between the many CSTs that are developed and what creative practitioners actually use. Therefore, previous studies iteratively developed a user-centered tool called “IDEA” that tries to provide a tool that responds to users' needs. The question arises how the developed tool IDEA performs in “real life setting” regarding its UX and usability as well as the creativity method acceptance and level of mental workload.

To remain competitive, companies today are increasingly faced with the challenge of reacting adequately in dynamic development environments. For product development, in particular, it is necessary to organize decision-making processes so they can react quickly and flexibly to changes in the development environment. To describe the dynamics and changeability, the term VUCA is used, which is a synonym for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, and thus summarises the most diverse forms of changeability. An adaptation of agile methods to the development context makes it necessary to specify the causes of uncertainty in more detail. The article presents a framework that analyses these influencing factors and differentiates them more precisely to specify problems in dealing with VUCA and to develop recommendations for action for the goal-oriented adaptation of agile methods.

While volume-driven industries such as automotive are characterized by a high degree of data backflow across all production cycles, there is still a certain residue in the planning and construction of process plants. This is firstly due to the high proportion of customer-specific requirements and secondly to the significant amount of value added on site during construction. To handle recurring project-specific process plants as time- and cost-efficiently as possible, optimal information exchange among contractors of various disciplines and the plant developer is a prerequisite. For this purpose, a holistic digital representation of the plant is created, which consolidates all relevant information in one place serving as a foundation of multiple digital twins. An approach to identify and define relevant information depending on their subsequent use is developed. On this basis, a framework is proposed to enable a multipliable BOM-based automatic definition of information backflow to instantiate digital representations in parallel to the planning and construction process. Furthermore, project-specific contextual information will be captured and referenced in a structured form preventing their loss for subsequent similar projects.

Sharing information between stakeholders is a critical success factor for ecodesign projects. This sharing is based on indicators that can be interrelated, i.e., impacting each other.

This article focuses on the perception of environmental performance indicators’ relationships during the design phase of projects. It uses a DEMATEL approach combined with a graph-database visualization linking environmental performance indicators. While the DEMATEL approach highlights the critical environmental indicators, the graph-based visualization maps the primary interrelations of these factors and defines the best scale to manage them. The novelty here lies in the complementary use of these two methods to facilitate environmental project monitoring.

This research is applied to rail infrastructure projects. The main results insist on land optimization, landscape insertion, carbon footprint, economic benefits, and biodiversity measures as critical factors when designing these projects. The graph-based visualization maps the main oriented links between indicators, allowing managers to identify the gaps between the perceived knowledge and the ground truth, facilitating their project monitoring.

When a design team faces the problem of designing a complex system, they are required to make several decisions. Because such design problems are difficult to solve all at once, teams often decompose the design problem into several smaller subproblems. This paper discusses the results of a study designed to understand how design teams decompose a factory redesign problem into sets of related subproblems and compare the subproblems obtained for each design team. This exploratory study analyzed the design activities of eight teams of professionals and used clustering to group the variables that the design teams considered. We found that the design teams used different decomposition strategies and different subproblems, but they more often considered subproblems with design variables of the same type, and some teams followed a top-down design process.