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.

In the age of the fourth industrial revolution, the competition between enterprises is fierce to operate efficiently and hold on to their customers. Due to lack of time and methodology, many leaders struggle to establish optimized strategies for their businesses. To do so, the key processes need to be measured using dashboards that proactively help decisions making, facilitate the strategy execution and keep the employees focused. The purpose of this article is to identify the design features of a risk analysis dashboard and their effects on the perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness.