A Digital Twin as a virtual representation of a physical system is becoming a key technology. While potential benefits are evident, there is no approach in literature or practice comprehensively supporting its introduction. In an industrial case study, a generic procedure model for the conception and implementation of a Digital Twin was developed. The relations between use cases, usage data, and virtual models resulted in a target concept as well as requirements for the implementation. Thereby, companies can access the potentials of a Digital Twin taking into account their specific situation.

It is important to be able to compare and evaluate different solutions early in development. This paper proposes a method for structuring historical data into a data model that can support the evaluation of new design concepts. The data is contextualized by linking it to a hierarchical decomposition of existing products. Two case studies were conducted to evaluate the value of using historical data when evaluating new concepts. The cases confirm that the proposed method is useful for evaluation of new concepts.

When designing complex systems, multiple people contribute to the process of information collection in support of decision making. In this paper, we study information collection in the Issue Resolution Decision Support (IRDS) framework. We assess the difficulties associated with uncertainty in the often scarce data when implementing the framework in a company and map out how the data sources are scattered across the organization. We study the elicitation process and propose to leverage sensitivity analysis to better allocate data collection efforts.

Big data provides high volume of data to inform product customisation. Understanding which data is relevant remains a challenge. A method is proposed to identify relevant data to inform data-driven customisation. A case study regarding customisation of orthoses was conducted. Verbal protocol analysis was employed to extract time spent on major fabrication phases. Data related to patients, therapists and fabrication time was analysed. Results showed that the number of stabilised joints, experience of therapists and whether the design is for in- or out-patient are key factors for customisation.

Pairwise comparison is basically used to prioritize alternatives and select a solution in product development. Decision errors can happen when the amount of processing information increases. This research proposes an assisted decision tool to prioritize alternatives by using the pairwise comparison technique and a Quicksort algorithm. This software was evaluated in the product development workshop that aims to select the component to further develop in the new product generation. This tool provides high-reliability results, reduces procedure time and is a user-friendly interactive interface.

Tension chording is a lightweight design principle in the human motion system. More muscles than necessary are available in this system to generate motion. By using these redundant muscles the principle contributes to the lightweight design of the motion segments. The lightweight design benefits of the principle for technical structures loaded with bending torques were shown in prior studies. This paper presents a pilot study on lightweight design benefits of using tension chording for torsion loaded structures.

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.

Nowadays, a large number of different tools that support early phases of design are available to engineers. In the past decade a specialized set of CAD-based tools were developed, that support the ideation process by generating different design alternatives according to the criteria given by the designer. Two types of tools are discussed in this paper: topology optimization and generative design tools. To investigate to what extent these tools are suitable for use in early design phases and what are the main differences between them, a study was conducted on an industrial case.

A data analysis method aiming to support cause and effect analysis in design exploration studies is presented. The method clusters and aggregates effects of multiple design variables based on the structural hierarchy of the evaluated system. The resulting dataset is intended as input to a visualization construct based on colour-coding CAD models. The proposed method is exemplified in a case study showing that the predictive capability of the created, clustered, dataset is comparable to the original, unmodified, one.

This paper presents a method for multi-objective optimization of hose assembly routing. Hose routing is a non-trivial task which demand a lot of iterations, especially with the increased complexity in modern vehicles. The proposed method utilizes design automation through multi-objective optimization of routing assemblies containing multiple hoses. The method is intended as a decision support and automation-tool, that reduces the number of iterations needed. The method has been implemented and tested on a case, concerning a set of hoses in an engine compartment, showing credible results.

This paper presents a test bed for AI technology on the integration of creative AI (CAI) with hybrid design tools (HDTs). The objective is to build and develop tools and programs for creative people (e.g. designers, engineers) to use, whereby the artificial intelligence (AI) software acts as a creative collaborator rather than a mere tool. The goal is to find a set of guiding principles, metaphors and ideas that inform the development of a CAI praxis imbued with computational support tools, new theories, experiments, and applications. Results and findings are presented of early-stage research.

Modern products are often developed in local distributed teams involving various engineering domains. As a result, product development processes are characterized by a high degree of complexity and individuality. However, the project context is often not integrated into the project planning, which can lead to uncertainties in the processes. In addition, reflection does not take place adequately in process execution. Therefore, this paper presents a concept for agile process design that enables reducing uncertainties based on context-specific reflections and adapting the processes.

A central part of the design process is collaboration, harnessing specialist expertise often in meetings. We understand relatively little about how meetings serve teams of designers and their work and this study uses soft systems methodology to attempt to create structures that describe and explain meetings. The results suggest extension of the boundary of interest and suggest a conceptual framework which reveals some under-addressed stages and activities which may help designers improve their meetings.

There is little tolerance for deviation in time, budget and quality in the execution of product development projects. On the other hand, the project environment is gaining complexity. Changes on project scope are daily business. We set up an initial hypothesis, that unplanned changes -newness- has negative impact on projects. We developed and executed therefore a survey about factors belonging to innovation, complexity and newness to test their perceived impact on project success. Our data show a positive correlation between unsuccessful projects and newness, which is discussed in the paper.

Flexibility and changeability are crucial when it comes to the design of embedded automotive architectures. However, flexibility and changeability are concepts rooted in the overall product and its objectives, while architectural design decisions may affect local subsystems as well as the overall system. Axiomatic design is applied to bridge this gap: The architecture is decomposed into its entities and changeability is described through the design's information content. Five domains of actions to foster changeability are identified and generic action schemes are derived.

This paper contributes to the reduction of conflicts arising along the construction process by improving contract management tools and contracts designing tools. We analyse the existing system of representation of relations between Owner and Contractor, the contract and the construction processes. We improve the actual representation of construction processes by creating a link with the contract. Our ambition is to create a representation that will allow organizations and project managers to represent the construction contracts and design better construction contracts.

The advantages of distributed development teams help companies to address megatrends like globalization and individualization. However, development teams are facing challenges according to increasing requirements on communication processes. This approach provides a methodology to identify and address improvement potentials in communication processes of distributed product development by including the dimensions technology, organization and human involved in the development process. The validation of the methodology's process steps was carried out together with a machine tool manufacturer.

Crucial in the design process, Technology Readiness Levels are a common form of technology maturity assessment. Studies suggest that the TRL scale can be subjective and biased. Automating the assessment can reduce human bias. This paper highlights important challenges of automation by presenting data collected on 15 technologies from the nanotechnology sector. Our findings show that, contrary to claims from the literature, patent data exists for low maturity technologies and may be useful for automation. We also found that there exists unexpected trends in data publications at TRL 2, 3 and 4.

In automotive industry, the design process is costly and time-consuming. Car safety is a crucial factor in the development of a vehicle, which is why crash simulation is an essential step in the design process. To improve car crash simulation analysis, it is necessary to reduce the time required and support the resolution of encountered design issues. We propose a knowledge management approach to support car crash simulation analysis and ensure the collaboration of different stakeholders. In a knowledge-intensive context, we used an ontology-based approach to formalise and capture knowledge.

As time-to-market is getting shorter, customer needs have to be identified as early as possible in product development. Correctly applied, corporate foresight can give a glimpse into the future to anticipate such needs and thus gain a competitive advantage. A support tool to choose the appropriate method of foresight is not available yet. Thus, a literature study on foresight methods in industry is performed and a novel decision support tool is proposed which avoids high entrepreneurial risks. Based on the findings, potentials for future work are identified for different types of methods.