Additive manufacturing enables new possibilities for the design of end products. These are rooted in the potentials of the manufacturing technology, such as flexible, tool-free production. These potentials can be used for the economic and flexible production of customized products. To support the use of the potentials, a development method was created which identifies optimization areas within a product. Therefore, the complexity is reduced by using of product functions. Characteristic functions and structural configurations are used to identify optimization areas. This contribution describes the application of the new development method to an existing mechanical transtibial prosthesis. In doing so optimization areas are identified which may make use of the potentials provided by additive manufacturing. One area is the interface between the prosthesis and the ground. By analyzing walking environments and the gait cycle the need for walking assistance on deformable surfaces was identified. Significant improvements were achieved through a functional integrated, additive manufactured foot sleeve.

Open-source hardware (OSH) development is a new design paradigm from a commercial perspective. Openly sharing designs of technical products is a step towards democratising access to new technologies for the benefit of individuals and communities in society. At the core of the open-source hardware definition lies the freedom for anyone to replicate the hardware based on the design. Thus, enabling this freedom is a step towards developing a successful OSH. Previous research supposes that a bill of materials and assembly instructions are enough for this. In this study, we question this assumption and investigate what other factors may influence replicability of an OSH. Using data from a survey and interviews with OSH practitioners, we identify and describe these factors, which relate to the documentation, the design and the context of the person replicating the hardware. Using these insights, we present a diagram of the replication process along with questions the person replicating the hardware would ask to check whether an OSH is replicable. Finally, we synthesise this information into practical advice for OSH projects to increase the replicability of the designs they produce, and thus the likelihood of their project's success.

Estimating the costs of products during development to design a cost efficent product is a well established process. But in the case of Product-Service Systems estimating the costs of the individual product is not sufficent. Instead it is necessary to calculate the cost incured over the entire life cycle of the product. Because with Product-Service Systems the majority of costs is not incurred during manufacturing of the product but instead during the operation. One of the major cost components accruing during the operation of the product are the maintennace costs. Therefore, current life cycle costing models show the impoact of component design on the maintennace cost of the Product-Service System. But they do not show how different maintennace strategies that can have an impact on the overall life cycle costs of the Product-Service System. Thus, this paper shows a method for the implementation of different maintennace strategies into life cycle costing and applies it in an industrial use case.

To deal with the complexity caused by a constantly increasing need for product customization many companies have adopted a product modularization strategy. Product modularization has the potential to give benefits both in the design of products, in manufacturing as well as in the supply chain. But, it poses great challenges in its implementation, which includes complex decision-making that will affect the whole value-chain. The purpose of this paper is to describe how a game-based approach can be used for academic education, and management training, with the aim of improving decision-making in product modularization. This by visualizing, and practice, the complex interplay between product, manufacturing and supply chain architecture. The paper describes the development of the LEGO Exploratorium game set up, based on the LEGO minifigures, and how it has been used for both teaching engineering students and in company workshop. Using this game set up will increase companies' possibilities to develop modularized products that are designed for both efficient manufacturing and supply chain management.

The success of a company is directly linked to its economic objectives. One of the elementary objectives is to maximize profit by reducing the company's own costs in order to increase competitiveness in the market. State of the art is the function-oriented and unambiguous technical specification through the application of Geometrical Product Specifications (GPS). Linking costs related to the GPS system is currently only possible to a limited extent. This contribution presents an approach to quantify costs based on statistical tolerance analysis. The application is intended to determine the impact of a GPS-compliant specification in direct comparison to a non-compliant technical drawing by analyzing scrap rates. In this way, an assessment of the changes associated with the consistent application of the GPS system should be achieved. The results of the study show that a comparison is only possible to a certain degree due to the different characteristics. Based on this finding, an extended evaluation methodology is described.

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.

Integrated Natural Resource and Conservation Development (INRCD) Projects is an umbrella term for a variety of Integrated Conservation and Development Projects (ICDPs), a concept first introduced by the World Wide Fund for Nature in the mid 1980s to target practice-oriented efforts in developing countries; and Integrated Natural Resource Management (INRM) research and development projects introduced as adaptive management for fisheries, wildlife, forest, and rangeland to target analysis-oriented efforts in developing and developed countries. Both efforts seek to balance economic development and natural resource conservation. This paper reviews the literature over the past four decades in an attempt to determine which planning and execution methods lead to greater success. A thematic analysis revealed three broad areas of importance: community inclusion and income diversification, inadequate training and management, and inability to properly quantify data. A systems design optimization approach for such projects is advocated to support project decision making in these areas of importance.

Engineered products have economic, environmental, and social impacts, which comprise the major dimensions of sustainability. This paper seeks to determine the interaction between design parameters when the social impacts are incorporated into the design process. Social impact evaluation is increasing in importance similar to what has happened with environmental impact consideration in recent years in the design of engineered products. Concurrently, research into new airship design has increased, however airships have yet to be reintroduced at a large scale and for a range of applications in society. Although airships have the potential for positive environmental and economic impacts, the social impacts are still rarely considered. This paper presents a case study of the hypothetical introduction of airships in the Amazon to help local farmers transport their produce to market. It explores the design space in terms of the airship's social impacts connected to the design parameters. The social impacts are found to be dependent not only on the social factors and airship design parameters, but also on the farmer-airship system, suggesting that socio-technical systems design will benefit from integrated social impact metric analysis.

Currently, inconsistent software versions lead to massive challenges for many car manufacturers. This is partly because within the product lifecycle management and the software engineering process, there is no correct handling of software versions for the “data entry” (installation of software on the ECU) of the vehicles. Furthermore, there are currently major challenges for many vehicle manufacturers to ensure transparency, integrity and full traceability of SW data status vis-à-vis the legislator. To counteract these challenges, new solutions in the field of vehicle engineering are to be developed based on a new platform called “CarEngChainNet” and Blockchain technology. On the basis of the “CarEngChainNet” platform, new main and sub-chain chains will be developed that allow tamper-proof SW data management (Peer to Peer and crypto technology) across the entire PLM chain with new methods such as model-based systems engineering of the requirement, function and integration of the SW components in different areas of vehicle development. The aim is to develop new transmission chains of vehicles with individually packaged software artefacts (e.g. ECU software) that can be securely transmitted from server to server into the vehicle.

This paper considers the orientation of product development structures towards interdisciplinary system architectures using the example of a tool machine manufacturer. Due to the change from simple mechanical products to extensively designed systems, whose successful development requires the integration of all disciplines involved, it is analyzed which requirements there are for these interdisciplinary system architectures in today's development environment. In addition, it is validated on the basis of the investigation environment that interdisciplinary system structures are necessary for the development on the different levels of the system view. In doing so, the investigation environment addresses the concept of extracting customer-relevant features (systems) from a physical-tailored modular system (supersystem) in order to develop and test them autonomously, as well as to transfer them to the entire product range in a standardized manner. The elaboration identifies basic requirements for the development of a knowledge base in interdisciplinary system structures and places them into the context of an agile modular kit development.

Product concept generation and evaluation are critical for the success of new product developments (NPD) because managers need to select the most profitable product concepts. However, current approaches can be restricted to single products and do not cover product families' effects. Similarly, they do not necessarily capture all requirements and usually lack extensive cost analyses. Thus, this paper proposes a framework supporting product concept generation and evaluation by providing an accessible conceptualization to overcome the limitations. Using the so-called Extended Axiomatic Design (EAD) supports designers and managers to configure the requirements across product concepts' various domains while concurrently evaluating their economic consequences. The study applies the framework on a simplified case of a bottle manufacturer to conceptualize four product concepts. The case illustrates how the EAD can be used as a virtual testbed to generate and evaluate new product concepts. Finally, designers and managers can make more informed decisions about product concepts by considering their economic and engineering selection criteria to select the most profitable NPD project configuration.

Multidisciplinary Design Optimization (MDO) is a method that has shown many promising results in the development of complex engineered products. To this date, research on MDO has been extensive, but at the same time, very few publications have addressed the aspect of how it can be taught to students and young professionals. In this light, this paper aims to present the experiences of the authors in respect to the development and management of an MDO course at Linköping University. First, this work will describe the authors' teaching approaches, and in particular, it will present the various educational activities that have been considered over the years as well as the lessons learnt. Secondly, this work will attempt to investigate how students perceive a set of common MDO concepts, and more specifically, it will present an analysis based on the results of two surveys that took place in 2016 and 2020, respectively. Given the above foundation, this paper will try to establish guidelines regarding the activities which are suitable for teaching each concept, while finally, it will also touch upon the challenges as well as the solutions for adjusting an MDO course to a distance learning mode.

The purpose of this paper is to showcase initial considerations taken in the process of Product-Service Systems (PSS) development in the capital goods manufacturing companies. The focus is on the identification of both generic drivers and barriers that typically present themselves. Drivers and barriers are classified and compared, with respect to developed dimensions that aim to encompass different aspects relevant to PSS development. The classification presented in this paper has promise when researching how to support companies that aspire to develop and implement PSS, both to invigorate internal motivation for change and to understand crucial obstacles that might arise in the process. Furthermore, a chain of discovered motives and challenges for PSS is discussed, in an attempt to relate and connect the general manufacturing industry to the capital goods manufacturing industry.

The concept of Design for Additive Manufacturing (DfAM) is gaining popularity along with AM, despite its scopes are not well established. In particular, in the last few years, DfAM methods have been intuitively subdivided into opportunistic and restrictive. This distinction is gaining traction despite a lack of formalization. In this context, the paper investigates experts' understanding of DfAM. In particular, the authors have targeted educators, as the perception of DfAM scopes in the future will likely depend on teachers' view. A bespoke survey has been launched, which has been answer by 100 worldwide-distributed respondents. The gathered data has undergone several analyses, markedly answers to open questions asking for individual definitions of DfAM, and evaluations of the pertinence of meanings and acceptations from the literature. The results show that the main DfAM aspects focused on by first standardization attempts have been targeted, especially products, processes, opportunities and constraints. Beyond opportunistic and restrictive nuances, DfAM different understandings are characterized by different extents of cognitive endeavor, convergence vs. divergence in the design process, theoretical vs. hands on approaches.

The functional analysis of technical systems is an important part of the design process. To further improve the design process, especially the functional analysis, it must not be viewed as a monodisciplinary process. To this end, cognitive factors such as the aha-experience must also be included in studies of analysis processes to a greater extent. This paper investigates the relationship between the occurrence of aha-experiences and the correctness of solutions in the analysis of a technical system. An aha-experience is a strong feeling of subjective certainty that accompanies the cognitive process of suddenly finding a previously unknown solution. For this purpose, a study on the functional analysis was evaluated. The results show that many identified subfunctions of the system under investigation were identified with an aha-experience and that these subfunctions are more often correct. The results also suggest that aha-experiences occur more often among students than among experienced design engineers. Especially among students, a positive relation of aha-experiences on the correctness of the identified subfunction can be seen. This offers potential for further investigations to make aha-experiences useful in design methods.

In powder bed fusion (PBF) additive manufacturing, the definition of part orientation is one of the most important steps as it affects the quality, the cost and the build time of products. Different works already attempted to propose methodologies for the assessment of optimal build orientation based on criteria such as the minimization of support volume. Elicitation works with industry experts have shown that they use much more varied rules to determine the orientation of parts. For instance, they do not treat the different surfaces of the part the same way (e.g., experts state that “priority surfaces of the part must be oriented close to vertical”). Today, the available tools do not allow integrating these kind of specifications. This paper discusses a knowledge-based methodology for the evaluation of part candidate orientations in PBF. Desirability function approach is used to translate companies’ expertise in the form action rules into mathematical functions that are tested on geometries to provide metrics for assisting the decision-making. A case study is presented to illustrate the use of this desirability function approach on complex part orientation problem.

Product Service Systems (PSS) are increasingly important for companies. They enable a multitude of advantages, including the ability to offer customers even more individual customised solutions. However, PSS can also cause negative effects for companies. For example, PSS increase the complexity within companies. In order to cope with this complexity, the modularisation of PSS is frequently suggested in literature. However, existing approaches for modularisation only consider functional reasons for module composition and neglect the product-strategic aspects. This paper introduces a new approach for the modularisation of PSS, which combines functional and product-strategic aspects into one approach. To achieve this, a separate modular structure is developed for each life phase. Following this, these are harmonised across all life phases. This enables the advantages of the modular PSS structure to be used in all life phases. A PSS family of laser processing machines is used to illustrate the new developed approach.

This paper seeks to address the gap between qualitative Robust Design principles and parameter optimization. The former often fails to consider the challenging amount of details in embodiment and configuration design, while the latter is the widely accepted main thrust in traditional Robust Design. The gap is addressed by exploring the value of five quantitative robustness indicators for Design Space Exploration based on variables, objectives and constraints: The set level indicators, Design Space Size and Pareto Set Dispersion, and the point level indicators, Neighbourhood Performance, Failure Rate and Distance to Failure. As a background for the discussion of the limitations of these indicators an industrial case is presented. The case is an incremental encoder and includes two configurations for comparison, five objectives, eight variables, and a range of constraints. The design spaces are sampled and they show conflicting objectives, dispersed spaces and variables dependencies. Based on this it is suggested that set level indicators are more suitable than point level indicators of early robustness evaluation, but the available indicators are limited in their considerations of design space discontinuity and conflicts.

The success of engineering product development depends on the effective communication of design descriptions in formats that suit the needs and capabilities of all stakeholders involved in the delivery to market and through-life support of products. Configuration management is a core design process to ensure the consistency of the technical data package, i.e., the collection of design descriptions needed to support the development, manufacture and operation of a given product. Bills of Materials (BoMs) are critical parts of the technical data package because they act as integrators: adapting detailed design descriptions to suit the needs of particular downstream processes. The ability to reconfigure BoMs while maintaining internal consistency of the technical data package (where all BoM configurations are complete and compatible with each other) is a major challenge. In this paper, we introduce research exploring computational tools that could support engineers in manipulating BoMs while also maintaining the internal consistency of the technical data package.

Design, delivery and improvement processes in healthcare is of great challenge due to increasing pressures on healthcare systems alongside inherent complexities, resulting in limited benefits or unforeseen consequences. A recent Systems Approach framework has aimed at responding to the calls about implementing a more holistic approach. Though being an approach in its own right that can iteratively and systematically structure, guide, and/or facilitate design and improvement projects in healthcare, it can also augment existing approaches that have already place in healthcare designers' and improvement practitioners' agendas. Thus, the objective of this paper is to compare and contrast the questions, activities, and tools of the Systems Approach with processes of other major improvement approaches in healthcare to demonstrate their coverages, overlaps, and extended and new opportunities to pursue in the light of the Systems Approach.