The education sector got severely impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. In the beginning, remote learning posed challenges to teachers and students. However, many new pedagogical experiments demonstrated the potential to continue even in the post-Covid world. This study explains the pedagogical change in product design education from a traditional studio-based model to a virtual environment, without compromising the learning outcomes. The paper also describes the learning experiences of the students and measures the effectiveness of virtual education through qualitative and quantitative studies.

Using 61 stories from design educators from different countries, this paper presents (1) the design competencies being fostered at different levels of education, (2) the practices (approaches, techniques, methods and tools) used to facilitate teaching and learning, (3) the ‘non-design’ competencies being fostered, and (4) the impact of COVID 19. Our findings highlight design education is not only used to teach students how to design, but also to kindle productive attitudes, behaviours and mindsets that give them the ability to address a wide range of challenges.

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 concept of Industry 4.0 has motivated large engineering sectors towards a common focus for improvement. Academics have capitalised on the common language, shared motivation and marketability of Industry 4.0. The potential and perceived benefits of Industry 4.0 are clear within academia and beyond. However, are engineering companies ready for the digital transformation associated? and, can Industry 4.0 be achieved by SMEs? In this paper, we investigate these questions through activity on project road mapping with 4 Scottish companies to reveal Industry 4.0 readiness and literacy.

Offering product-service systems instead of technical products is one way for companies to achieve a competitive advantage and stay viable in the future. This paper presents a workshop series created in cooperation between a manufacturer of wood processing production lines and a research institute for engineering design to develop PSS concepts for a plant. Using the finger jointing line as an example, the progress and results of the workshops are presented. Furthermore, it is discussed whether the workshop series is transferable to other products and industries.

By means of additive manufacturing, especially laser powder bed fusion, particle dampers can be integrated locally into structural components and thus significantly reduce component vibrations. However, detailed design recommendations for additively manufactured particle dampers do not yet exist. The research question in this paper is: How can the effect of particle damping be described as a function of excitation force, cavity width and cavity length? For beams made of AlSi10Mg, it is shown that a powder-filled cavity of 2.5% to 5% is sufficient to increase the damping by more than x10.

In a quiet environment, even a small noise attracts the attention of the people around. In order to reduce the stress of speakers, listeners, and other people around them, we devised a tool to support conversation by converting voice into ultrasonic waves and outputting them from parametric speakers to deliver the sound to the conversation partner. Since light materials can be used for soundproofing ultrasonic waves, we used cardboard and newspaper as soundproofing materials. We confirmed that the sound converted by the tool can be used for conversation and soundproofed.

Agile approaches are increasingly being used in appropriate use cases for the development of mechatronic systems.In the process of implementing agile elements in the development processes, the question of the success of the transformation often arises. In order to support the agile transition in measuring process improvement, a framework was developed that evaluates the success of the implementation process by means of interviews at 4 maturity levels in the transformation. The method was evaluated in 3 use cases. On this basis, continuous adaptations can be made to the implementation process.

Truss structures are a stiff, economical, and efficient lightweight design, the limiting factor of these structures are usually the load transfer elements. This paper presents an analytical design method for optimized adhesive tubular lap joints between CFRP tubes and aluminium inserts. The analytically optimized design agrees very well with the numerical simulations and experimental results. Although the experiments show a highly non-linear behaviour, where a linear elastic correlation is expected, the total load capacity is only reached when the adhesive is fully plasticised.

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.

Product design is a key aspect of human intelligence and creativity, attracting not only experts but also workers and self-employed without any formal design training. Although numerous people in developing countries design and manufacture simple products in metalworking microenterprises, there is very little systematic knowledge about their design process. This paper aims to fill this gap in design knowledge. We aim at investigating some aspects of design process in the metalworking microenterprises in Tanzania. The findings reveal how they identify needs, and generate and evaluate concepts.

There has been a growing body of literature and use cases for set-based design since its introduction in the 80s. Few studies or use cases involve highly complex systems, though, except for the hallmark work regarding Toyota in the late 90s. Over the last three years, the US Navy used set-based methods to design a complex system of systems: a warship. Their experience provides insight into the scalability of the method and design management considerations relevant to the start of similar projects.

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.

The design of service robots is typically treated as a mechatronic design problem aimed at implementation of its core technical functionalities. Intuitive operation and usability are ignored. We developed a trash-picking service robot with a strong focus on human-robot interaction (HRI) using the double diamond framework. The HRI-focussed hardware features were successfully implemented and tested. The results were shown to satisfy the ease of operation and usability requirements set as development goals for the robot.

This paper presents five industrial cases where design automation (DA) systems supported by design optimization has been developed, and aims to summarize the lesson learned and identify needs for future development of such projects. By mapping the challenges during development and deployment of the systems, common issues were found in technical areas such as model integration and organizational areas such as knowledge transfer. The latter can be seen as a two-layered design paradox; one for the product that the DA system is developed for, and one for the development of the DA system.

Adaptive façades (AF), unlike conventional façades, respond to their environment to reduce energy consumption while increasing comfort. The planning of AF presents architects and engineers with a variety of challenges. One central challenge is the specification of the right planning goals in the early phases. This paper identifies in a systematic literature review the main characteristics which were crucial in previous realizations of AF. Due to the comprehensive approach it provides a reference for the goal definition of subsequent projects and the development of further methodical support.

This paper analyzes the potential of crossdisciplinary collaboration in the methodical development of Modular Design by harmonization asynchronous mechatronic system structures. Subsystem boundaries in multidisciplinary development processes are set disciplinespecific, resulting in inconsistencies in module fitting. Based on a case study, harmonization of disciplines is elaborated as a solution. This aligns discipline structures and reduces effects on the variety in system structures.This implementation shows support for modular design and enables an integrated view as a systems-in-system.