Together with increasingly saturated and commoditized global markets companies are driven to shift their business focus, adopting a strategy where customer perceived value is in the spotlight, and where products are bundled with services to offer Product-Service Systems (PSS).

In this research we study the emergence of PSS solutions in the Chinese market via a selected case study on e-scooters, based on the governmental decision to ban fossil-fuel scooters in the late 90s and how this has spurred both a fossil-to-electric transformation and a product-to-function transformation.

As seen in this research PSS is also an approach that is working well in the Eastern society and especially in China, based on governmental policies. It is gradually being adopted and applied in local industries significantly by China's leading internet companies (Didi, Alibaba etc). The PSS concept represented by e-bike cases in China has gradually penetrated into different industries. With governmental decisions as the key turn-point, it can be seen in practice and development that China's related service industry is using e-bike PSS to carry out the new business model from selling e-bikes to providing service-oriented solutions.

The interest in the Circular Economy (CE) has grown in recent years. Digital technologies (DTs) have demonstrated a potential synergy to achieve circular goals at the micro, meso, and macro-level. Although several studies in literature explore DTs and CE linkage, they have not been identified according to their primary research themes. This paper aims to identify the main research streams addressing CE and DTs. From a Systematic Literature Review and Content Analysis, we reviewed 40 articles and classified three primary research streams. (1) Industry 4.0 (I4.0) focuses on the relevance and role of I4.0 in the transition to a CE. (2) The Business research stream evaluated the connection between digital transformation and business. (3) The Sustainability research stream discusses sustainability issues such as waste management and smart cities. Based on the analyzed studies' purposes and gaps, we provide a research agenda for further research. Additionally, we explain the implications of DTs and CE to research on engineering design. Our paper guides researchers in their future research to focus on gaps that have not been answered and position their studies according to their research streams.

The impact of human behaviour on climate change is getting more apparent every day. Citizens are encouraged and sometimes forced to change their waste separation behaviour to reduce their effect on this global challenge. One way to achieve this is to reduce the amount of fine and bulky residual waste that ends in landfill or is incinerated. Studies show that this can be achieved by active, efficient, and correct household participation. Multiple intervention strategies are being tried out, while the European Union statistics show that the numbers are not at the desired level yet. To improve the waste separation practices, understanding the motivation and drivers of (correct) waste separation behaviour is of high importance for the current strategies' success. In this paper, based on the Self-Determination Theory, we propose "citizen-profiling" framework, which consists of six citizen profiles, that illustrates citizens' motivations and drivers of residual waste separation behaviour. We end this paper, with discussions on motivating the citizens to contribute to waste separation actively.

The sentence “form follows function” is the best expression of the relationship between form and function of a product in modern product design. This implies that the form is essential to implement the function while it should be optimized and minimized for the function. Unlike general products, transformable products are designed with the intention to change the function and form of the product according to the situation. This paper presents the types and characteristics of transformable products determined by Phase Model we introduced. We collected 147 transformable product cases and analyzed them according to the change of functions and forms in each product. As a result, we classified the transformable products into four types: partial transformable product, multi-form product, multi-function product and full transformable product. We found that each type has unique characteristics with potential to drive innovation in product design field.

Human-artificial intelligent (AI) - assisted teaming is becoming a strategy for coalescing the complementary strengths of humans and computers to solve difficult tasks. Yet, there is still much to learn regarding how the integration of humans with AI agents into a team affects human behavior. Accordingly, this work begins to inform this research gap by focusing specifically on how the communication structure and interaction changes within AI-assisted human teams. The underlying discourse data for this work originates from a prior research study in which teams solve an interdisciplinary drone design and path-planning problem. Several metrics are employed in this work to study team discourse, including count, diversity, content richness, and semantic coherence. Results show significant differences in communication behavior in AI-assisted teams including more diversity and frequency in communication, more exchange of information regarding principal design parameters and problem-solving strategies, and more cohesion. Overall, this work takes meaningful steps towards understanding the effects of AI agents on human behavior in teams, critical for fully building effective human-AI hybrid teams in the future.

Previous research has shown that experienced and novice individuals behave and think differently. Although experienced individuals are better at solving problems, organisations are constantly forming teams of experienced and novice designers to work together on their projects. It is crucial to understand how these teams affect the design outcomes. Therefore, the aim of the study is to investigate how collaborative design teams perform when composed of varying numbers of experienced and novice agents. Specifically in this paper, teams work on a routine task and design outcomes are measured in terms of quality, variety, and exploration of the design space. Since the parameters in the empirical laboratory experiments are difficult to control, an agent-based model was used to simulate these teams. In general, the results show that a team of novice agents with a small number of experienced agents produces solutions of higher quality than an all novice team of agents. However, an all novice team of agents does provide a higher variety of solutions. These results have important implications when teams of experienced and novice designers are formed to work together in practice.

Metal additive manufacturing (AM) is revered for the design freedom it brings, but is it environmentally better or worse than conventional manufacturing? Since few direct comparisons are published, this study compared AM data from life-cycle assessment literature to conventional manufacturing data from the Granta EduPack database. The comparison included multiple printing technologies for steel, aluminum, and titanium. Results showed that metal AM had far higher CO2 footprints per kg of material processed than casting, extrusion, rolling, forging, and wire drawing, so it is usually a less sustainable choice than these. However, there were circumstances where it was a more sustainable choice, and there was significant overlap between these circumstances and aerospace industry use of metal AM. Notably, lightweight parts reducing embodied material impacts, and reducing use-phase impacts through fuel efficiency. Finally, one key finding was the irrelevance of comparing machining to AM per kg of material processed, since one is subtractive and the other is additive. Recommendations are given for future studies to use more relevant functional units to provide better comparisons.

Considering a growing number of metrics and indicators to assess circular economy, it is of paramount importance to shed light on how they differ from traditional approaches, such as life cycle assessment (LCA) or sustainability performance indicators. This study provides new empirical insights on the correlation between LCA, circularity, and sustainability indicator-based approaches. Specifically, the importance lies in analyzing how the results generated by these different approaches can be used to support the design of products that are not only circular, but also sustainable. A practice-based project involving 87 engineering students (divided into 20 groups) is conducted with the aim to compare and improve the circularity and sustainability performance of three product alternatives of lawn mowers (gasoline, electric, autonomous). To do so, the following resources are deployed: 18 midpoints environmental indicators calculated by LCA, eight product circularity indicators, and numerous leading sustainability indicators. Critical analyses on the usability, time efficiency, scientific soundness, and robustness of each approach are drawn, combining quantitative results generated by each group with the feedback of future engineers.

When observing a design space expansion during teamwork, several studies found that cumulative solution-related issues' occurrence follows a linear trend. Such findings contradict the hypothesis of solution-related issues being characteristic for the later design stages. This work relies on agent-based simulations to explore the emerging patterns in design solution space expansion during teamwork. The results demonstrate trends that accord with the empirical findings, suggesting that a cognitive effort in solution space expansion remains constant throughout a design session. The collected data on agents' cognitive processes and solution space properties enabled additional insights, which led to the detection of four distinct regimes of design solution space expansion.

Vehicle doors have barely changed in recent decades, and nor has the car. Since autonomous driving will lead to changes in vehicles and how they are used, their doors will also have to be rethought. In the project UNICARagil, researchers from several universities in Germany design and build four prototypes of driverless and autonomous vehicles, which are developed based on a new and modular architecture. As part of this, we developed a concept including a prototype of an automated door system. In this paper, we present our concept development process adapted for door systems of autonomous vehicles. Based on the vehicle concept development process, it should help researchers and engineers to select and design new door concepts in an early phase. At the end, by means of an example, we present the prototype of our door concept as well as a boarding user study we carried out. This study helps evaluate and improve the boarding comfort of future door concepts.

In order to ensure successful product development processes, manifold modelling approaches have been developed, which cover a wide range of aspects such as responsibilities, duration of activities and dependencies. Still, an industry standard does not exist. Users of process modelling approaches are driven by different targets depending on the respective role. Currently, practitioners need to evaluate strengths and weaknesses of each approach by themselves and find little guidance for the selection.

As a consequence, users might select unsuitable approaches and do not get the expected result. Thus, the intended applications of the model such as analyses or an optimization of the process are hampered. This could heavily affect companies´ success by product or project failures.

The paper shows the concept of a recommendation tool that enables a suitable and effective selection of process modelling approaches. Key element is the description of relevant use cases and personas that represent the various needs of both different company types as well as different roles within such as process modellers and users. By identifying the most relevant case, each practitioner will be successfully guided to the most suitable modelling approach.

One of the greatest challenges of effectively managing knowledge in an organization is promoting seamless connections of operations between departments, the Product Lifecycle Management paradigm. It is also a paradigm that fosters organizational adaptability and quick change in production. Historically, information systems supporting operations have been developed with a specific department's culture in background. Due to this legacy, connecting data, information systems and people across the product lifecycle is an ongoing puzzle for organizations. Theorists and practicians agree on the need to include employees' expertise and vision in this process. However, this involves multiple perspectives and needs that are different but equally valid make. This study explores a tacit knowledge capture tool to be used as a means to voice the interaction and negotiation among employees. Through its influence on ontologies, concept maps collaborative creation can provide a usability tool focused on meaning throughout the product lifecycle. A literature review of the challenges involved and of the proposed tool is presented, followed by a use case and concluded with recommendations drawn from theory and practice.

One of the most challenging activity in the engineering design process is the definition of a framework (model and parameters) for the characterization of specific processes such as installation and assembly. Aircraft system architectures are complex structures used to understand relation among elements (modules) inside an aircraft and its evaluation is one of the first activity since the conceptual design. The assessment of aircraft architectures, from the assembly perspective, requires parameter identification as well as the definition of the overall analysis framework (i.e., mathematical models, equations).

The paper aims at the analysis of a mathematical framework (structure, equations and parameters) developed to assess the fit for assembly performances of aircraft system architectures by the mean of sensitivity analysis (One-Factor-At-Time method). The sensitivity analysis was performed on a complex engineering framework, i.e. the Conceptual Design for Assembly (CDfA) methodology, which is characterized by level, domains and attributes (parameters). A commercial aircraft cabin system was used as a case study to understand the use of different mathematical operators as well as the way to cluster attributes.

In order to efficiently design and deliver customized products, it is crucial that the process of translating customer needs to engineering characteristics and into unique products is smooth and without any misinterpretations. The paper proposes a method that combines design optimization with value-driven design to support and automate configuration of customized products. The proposed framework is applied to a case example with spiral staircases, a product that is uniquely configured for each customer from a set of both standard and customized components; a process that is complex, iterative and error-prone. In the case example, the optimization and value-driven design models are used to automate and speed-up the process of delivering quotations and design proposals that could be judged based on both engineering characteristics as well as their added value, thereby increasing the knowledge at the sales stage. Finally, a multi-objective optimization algorithm is employed to generate a set of Pareto-optimal solutions that contain four clusters of solutions that dominate the baseline design. Hence the decision-maker is given a set of optimal solutions to choose from when balancing different economical and technical characteristics.

Sustainability is a key issue for manufacturing companies, which detail in their annual corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports how they plan to operationalise the seventeen sustainable development goals set by the United Nations in 2016. Design is deemed particularly relevant to integrate sustainability issues, and many design for sustainability (DFS) approaches have developed since the 1980s. However, the lack of understanding of the relationship between CSR and design prevents DFS approaches from enabling sustainability issues to be integrated in the design process in a relevant manner with the CSR strategy of a company. Consequently, we developed a mapping methodology in order to provide a better understanding of the CSR-design relationship. This mapping methodology consists in (1) identifying the relevant CSR goals that can be managed during the design process, (2) gathering information about the links between these CSR goals and the design process through semi-structured interviews, and (3) building a map representing these links. We started to apply our mapping methodology in an application case in the automotive industry. The first results of this application are presented in this article.

Drones are becoming more popular within military applications and civil aviation by hobbyists and business. Achieving a natural Human-Drone Interaction (HDI) would enable unskilled drone pilots to take part in the flying of these devices and more generally easy the use of drones. The research within this paper focuses on the design and development of a Natural User Interface (NUI) allowing a user to pilot a drone with body gestures. A Microsoft Kinect was used to capture the user’s body information which was processed by a motion recognition algorithm and converted into commands for the drone. The implementation of a Graphical User Interface (GUI) gives feedback to the user. Visual feedback from the drone’s onboard camera is provided on a screen and an interactive menu controlled by body gestures and allowing the choice of functionalities such as photo and video capture or take-off and landing has been implemented. This research resulted in an efficient and functional system, more instinctive, natural, immersive and fun than piloting using a physical controller, including innovative aspects such as the implementation of additional functionalities to the drone's piloting and control of the flight speed.

This paper presents an EEG (Electroencephalography) study that explores correlations between the neurophysiological activations, the nature of the design task and its outputs. We propose an experimental protocol that covers several design-related tasks: including fundamental activities (e.g. idea generation and problem-solving) as well as more comprehensive task requiring the complex higher-level reasoning of designing. We clustered the collected data according to the characteristics of the design outcome and measured EEG alpha band activation during elementary and higher-level design task, whereas just the former yielded statistically significant different behaviour in the left frontal and occipital area. We also found a significant correlation between the ratings for elementary sketching task outcomes and EEG activation at the higher-level design task. These results suggested that EEG activation enables distinguishing groups according to their performance only for elementary tasks. However, this also suggests a potential application of EEG data on the elementary tasks to distinguish the designers' brain response during higher-level of design task.

Due to the falling costs of computational resources and the increasing potential of data acquisition, interest in digital twins, a virtual copy of the physical original, and their industrial application is increasing. Nevertheless, there is limited published work on how to support the process of physical to virtual twinning and what its key aspects are. The aim of this study is to present insights with regards to physical to virtual twinning gained from modelling projects in mechatronic product development. We conducted a survey and in-depth interviews with members of modelling projects. In the surveys and interviews we identified how physical products and virtual models were linked, which virtual models were used and which general challenges and key aspects are considered important by the project members. Our findings show that the key characteristics that pose challenges to modelling regarding physical to virtual twinning are model granularity, model validation, and model integration and interconnectivity.

Process models are among the principal artefacts used for managing design projects. However, the selection of effective modelling approaches can be difficult for design project managers, given that a plethora of tools exists for various modelling purposes. In addition to date no systematic approach for the assessment and selection of process modelling approaches is available to practitioners. This paper presents the development of criteria for benchmarking and selecting different process modelling tools. The results are based on three elements. (1) In a four-hour workshop undertaken by the Design Process SIG of the Design Society, bringing together around 20 international researchers and practitioners in design process modelling, an initial set of 58 criteria were brainstormed and consolidated during the workshop and in follow-up meetings. (2) The consolidated criteria were then compared with literature. The finalised criteria list was then validated by external experts in industry (3). The resulting list of 12 criteria provides a sound basis for practitioners to support a systematic selection of process modelling approaches. Further, it lays the foundation of a benchmarking tool, which is subject to future work.

Product modularisation continuously draws attention of scholars and practitioners since it supports organizations and industries to sustain in high product and service variety at reasonable costs and greater flexibility. This paper aims at revealing current trends and developments in the field of product modularisation by identifying the intellectual structure using a bibliometric review. Our sample accrues 1,366 publications from 2016 up to 2020 across disciplines while using bibliometric coupling composes a network. Analysing the network on similarities, we can not only find clusters of servitisation, closed-loop supply chains, and platform collaboration, because we also identify three trends of digital innovation, sustainability, and platform eco-systems. An analysis of authors currently indicates less integrated communities, which do not entirely refer to each other despite the similarity in their research. Collectively, the study suggests a timely update of current scholar activities and discussions in the field of product modularisation.