In the context of system of systems (SoS) engineering, the incorporation of design principles is critical to guide the engineering process. This paper presents a systematic literature review to synthesize a list of principles tailored for SoS. 26 principles were identified as generic principles and 39 were mapped to the specific challenges in SoS engineering. Through an evaluation using the principle of modularisation in the design of a charging infrastructure, the study offers insights into the real-world effectiveness of these principles, showing their relevance in SoS engineering tasks.

The growth in e-commerce has led to increased demand for logistics services. This puts a pressure on third-party logistics (3PL) providers who struggle with increasing operating costs and heightened competition. These providers could potentially exploit the advantages of modularisation, but few studies address the design of modular logistics services. This study explores modular design of logistics services and proposes a model to describe logistics service architecture based on product architecture. A case study shows that warehousing services can be described in three domains.

This paper examines upgradability through modular product design, aiming to extend lifecycles and promote cross-generational use. It builds up on a preceding work, a systematic literature- review identifying four fields of action in future-robust product design. The paper itself contains an in-depth interview study with 17 experts from industry and research to validate and expand the literature-based fields of action. The results provide insights into the application and employment of future-robust product design, with a focus on adaptable product architectures.

The transportation sector is responsible for a relevant share of the total emissions and offers great potentials. It is necessary to implement as many zero-emission mobility systems as possible in the shortest time. For fast ferries, which are a relevant transport manner for a large share of the global population, technical issues could be solved and the successful operation was demonstrated. Up to today high-speed ships have been fully individually designed because physical effects demand for an individual optimisation for each use-case. Specifically for battery electric ships the overall efficiency is crucial to ensure not only an ecological but also economical operation.

With today's methods the design and production of such an individual designed ferry does take too long. To cover the rising demand, new approaches for mass production need to be established.

In this paper we describe a method for designing a platform for ships with the example of a battery electric fast ferry. The focus is on the actual modularisation, as other aspects like requirements or results of our example case are published elsewhere and are therefore just included briefly.

The method is validated on the world's first battery powered high-speed ferry.

Climate change and the growing consumption of natural resources has made it increasingly clear that engineering must focus on the development of more sustainable products. To do so, the methodologies for developing products need to address sustainability. However, many of the frequently used methodologies, such as Modular Function Deployment (MFD) or the Life Phases Modularisation (LPM), do not do that sufficiently. The product life phases, these methodologies are based, only address sustainability in the form of recycling. That is why a broader approach to sustainability, such as the R-imperatives, is not considered. Therefore, in this contribution, the model of product life phases is extended by integrating the R-imperatives. Furthermore, the module drivers resulting from the extended product life phases that are necessary to apply the MFD and the LPM are developed. Finally, the positive impact of the developed module drivers on the product architecture is shown by applying the resulting method onto an industrial example.

The new development of cyber-physical product families currently lacks a methodically supported modularisation approach. This paper provides an approach for module-based mechatronic development, which provides design for future product variety. The state of the art in terms of mechatronic system design and modular product architecture design is presented. A modified V-model is then shown that integrates initial product architecture design and life phase modularisation. The method is applied and evaluated for the development of product family generations of robot units in a teaching course.

The modular design harbors a potential development in the prosumer scope that has hardly been previously exploited. Their joint application can lead to products focused on user participation through modular design. This work proposes and validates a concept evaluation metric in the design phases that meet these characteristics. To do this, 24 external designers and prosumers evaluate five products using this method. The results and conclusions contribute to the improvement of the method and provide information on how to approach it to the prosumers.

Maintenance is an essential aspect to keeping production facilities running and safe. However, without an overview of the maintenance impact on production, gaining clarification of the impact of maintenance is difficult. This paper introduces modularization of maintenance based on the dimensions of maintenance: physical, action, and process. The approach is applied in a case study where maintenance decisions are improved and faster than prior to the introduction of the modularized maintenance.

The modular lightweight design attempts to reconcile the partially conflicting goals between modularization and lightweight design in order to establish a harmonized modular hybrid design. This requires a close exchange of the resulting development data between the two areas. In this contribution a concept for an interface for the data exchange between system models and FEM models is presented and successfully implemented in the Cameo Systems Modeler and applied to examples from the aircraft cabin. With the interface the homogenization step of modular lightweight design can be performed.

By transforming from a manufacturer into a PSS provider, the business model of a company changes. In particular with service-oriented business models, the importance of tangible products alters. Instead of selling products, PSS providers need product fleets that enable the provision of services. If the manufacturer of the product and the provider of the PSS fleet are identical, the products can be designed specifically for the PSS. This paper introduces a framework that supports the design of modular PSS fleets so that the product architecture is optimised for the requirements of the fleet.

Companies are under increasing pressure from global competition while at the same they need to offer flexible products to meet individual customer requirements. Therefore, modularised capital goods are designed and manufactured to meet both challenges. This paper presents an approach to identify necessary changes in the production process and summarises the changes in the automotive and aerospace industries due to modularisation. Three key findings are identified: increased outsourcing potential, production in a value creation network with specialised manufacturers and joint investments.

In many industrial sectors, modularization of products and services is considered as an important contribution to increased efficiency and competitiveness. Research has developed many modularization approaches, however, there is a gap between industrial practice in modularization and state-of-research in this field, which partly is due to shortcomings in "measuring" the value and state of modularization. This papers contribution is an analysis of industrial real-world cases to contrast practice and research, and a compilation of metrics in the context of modular product design from research.

Aircraft cabin monuments must be optimized in terms of lightweight design, cost structure and variance. Model-based approaches support the aircraft data and help to modify them consistently during further development. In this paper, a holistic methodological approach for product families of aircraft cabin development is shown, which integrates lightweight and cost-efficient aspects, in addition to the variance focus. For this purpose, the development of cost-efficient and ligthweight optimized cabin modules is supported in a model-based way.

The paper studies what kind of support could be applied to the management of partly configurable modular systems. The main tasks of product management, product portfolio management and product variety management are defined. In addition, a partly configurable product structure and modular system are defined. Because the limited support in the literature for managing partly configurable modular systems, the article reviews previous product development cases in which authors have been involved on lessons learnt basis, i.e., if the methods and tools used in the cases could provide support for the research objective. As a result, the existing definition of the modular system should be extended by the concepts of non-module and design decision sequence description when dealing with partly configurable modular systems. This is because engineer-to-order should be made possible in cases where it brings clear added value to the customer compared to completely pre-defined solutions that may limit the customer's interest in the offering. Tools to assess the impact of changes to the product offering are required. These should be taken into account in frameworks that are used in method and tool development.

In order to meet an increasing internal variety, a solution can be the modularization of products. To motivate modularization projects throughout all phases of life, different effects of modular product families were collected in previous works on a literature basis. In this paper, a validation concept is presented, which will investigate these effects by using statements directly from industry representatives. In particular, the industry background is included in the evaluation to generate a more differentiated overall picture of impacts of modular product families.

Alternative ways to divide the product into modules, partitioning types, have been identified. The research material consists of the modularisation exercise at the university. Students modularised LEGO wheel loaders for product configuration. We began to see certain basic principles for partitioning the product into modules. From these, we compiled a collection of partitioning types. Similarities between the identified partitioning types and the literature exists. Future research is concerned with whether identified partitioning types would also support modularisation in industrial projects.

A new design methodology for long life and large size (Ll-Ls) products called Design for Installation (DfI) is proposed. Ll-Ls products are usually made up of large parts that need to be assembled on field. The proposed methodology, based on adapted Design Structure Matrix (DSM) and Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DfMA) methods, enables to optimize the design of a Ll-Ls product in order to reduce time and cost of the installation process. The new methodology works with a conceptual design of the product and the weight and size restrictions given by logistic factors as inputs.

With an increasing demand for product individualisation leading to increased product architecture complexity and -costs, modular kits are one common measure to cope with this issue. The management of such a modular kit as well as the methodical determination of a specific product variant is key to the manufacturer's success. As multiple influence factors need to be taken into account when configuring product variants, we propose a multi-dimensional geometric optimisation algorithm, allowing for prioritising varying customer demands and thereby determining the ideally balanced product variant.

Due to increasing cost pressure, companies are expanding their product range and therefore increasingly offering so-called product-service systems (PSS) to increase sales. At the same time, PSS can also contribute to an increase in variety-induced complexity in the company, which ultimately further increases cost pressure. In this article, the causes and effects of variety-induced complexity through products, services and PSS are analysed and the need for a new PSS design method is then demonstrated. Finally, a new framework is presented that enables the design of variety-oriented PSS.

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.