The paper presents an Artificial Intelligence-driven approach to predictive maintenance for Product-Service System (PSS) development. This study focuses on time-based and condition-based maintenance, leveraging variational autoencoders to identify both predicted and unpredicted maintenance issues in autonomous haulers. By analyzing data patterns and forecasting future values, this approach enables proactive maintenance and informed decision-making in the early stages of PSS development. 

The inclusion of interaction terms enhances the model’s ability to capture the interdependencies among system components, addressing hidden failure modes. Comprehensive evaluations demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the developed models, showcasing resilience to noise and variations in operational data. 

The integration of predictive maintenance with PSS development offers a strategic advantage, providing insights into vehicle performance early in the development phases. This empowers decision-makers for efficient resource allocation and proactive maintenance planning. The research highlights the limitations and potential areas of improvement while also emphasizing the practical applicability and significance of the developed models in enhancing PSS development. 

The paper presents the results of a three-days experiment to test the use of informationfrom a value assessment model and from a knowledge maturity scale in decisionmakingin preliminary design. A visual analogue scale was used to collect individualinformation from designers through questionnaires. Bivariate statistical analysis wasapplied to study the correlations between both the use of value drivers and knowledgematurity and the designers' awareness of the design problem to be addressed. Resultsshow that value drivers and knowledge maturity information increase the decisionmakers’ awareness of (1) the different perceptions of design team members about theneeds to be satisfied and (2) the technical solution to be developed in the productconcept under consideration.

The paper presents a discussion about gaps and opportunities for cross-pollination between Value Driven Design and Lean Product Service Development to promote the use of value-driven method and tools since the preliminary design stages. In particular the paper discusses how methods and tools developed in Value Driven Design have the potential to be applied in the preliminary design stage in the context of Lean Product Service Development. The paper concludes by defining a research area on Value Innovation method and tools for preliminary Lean Product Service Development.

The paper presents a Model-Driven approach for Product-Service System (PSS) Design promoting an increased digitalization of the PSS design process based on the combination of data-driven design (DDD) activities and value-driven design (VDD) methods. The approach is the results of an 8-year long research profile named (omitted for blind review) featuring the collaboration between (omitted for blind review) and nine industrial companies, in the field of PSS Design. It combines VDD models and the supporting data-driven activities in the frame of PSS design and aligns with the product value stream and the knowledge value stream in the product innovation process as described by Kennedy et al. (2008). The paper provides a high-level overview of the approach describing the different stages and activities, and provides references to external scientific contributions for more exhaustive descriptions of the research rationale and validity. The approach is meant to ultimately drive the development and implementation of a simulation environment for cross-functional and multi-disciplinary decision making in PSS, named Model-Driven Decision Arena, describe in the concluding part of the paper.

In recent times a service-dominant logic is permeating the design of complex systems. However, in spite of their appeal, initiatives such as Product Service Systems (PSS) have not become mainstream, and methods are lacking to support this transition. This paper argues that methodological guidance, as well as tools for decision support, may be found in the research field of Value Driven Design (VDD), which originates in the realm of Systems Engineering. The paper objective is to elaborate on gaps and opportunities for cross-pollination between VDD and PSS. The results of a systematic review of methods and tools for design decision support highlight the opportunity for introducing optimization models derived from VDD in the PSS design process, while the latter can enrich VDD research with a more qualitative value assessment logic. The paper summarizes this integration in a methodological approach, and exemplifies its application in case studies mainly from the aerospace and road construction equipment sector.

The development of complex product-service combinations challenges the existing practices for engineering knowledge management. The objective of the paper is to highlight how such practices need to change to meet the engineers’ demand for knowledge when developing “functions” instead of merely hardware. It further proposes Knowledge Enabled Engineering (KEE) as an umbrella term that collects engineering knowledge management methods and tools inspired by the second wave of knowledge management, and that are aimed to meet needs of today’s modern knowledge workers in engineering organizations. The current state of readiness of these approaches is eventually described together with results from verification and validation activities.

Designing and implementing a Knowledge Management System (KMS) in a Virtual Enterprise is a labour intensive and risky task. Solution prototypes (Pilots) are usually built to verify system effectiveness prior to final implementation. The paper proposes a methodology to guide this Pilot specifications definition process. These guidelines support engineers and knowledge experts in collaboratively defining functionalities, services, software components and performance indicators of the prototype. The methodology has been conceived and applied within the European project VIVACE, to support the development of a Knowledge Enabled Engineering (KEE) system in the aeronautical domain.

Innovation is triggered by the cross-pollination of fields and disciplines. In product development, this means bringing together people with different expertise to develop breakthrough product and service offers. In spite of their great potential, cross-functional efforts are not yet adequately supported from a knowledge perspective, asking for a more open and bottom-up open approach to knowledge management. The paper aims to investigate how social technologies can enhance collaboration and knowledge sharing in complex, cross-functional and cross-organizational product development projects. It initially highlights the role of weak ties as enablers for more innovative design processes, especially when manufacturing companies move towards developing integrated offers mixing hardware, software and services. Emerging from data collected in two case studies conducted within the European aeronautical industry, it applies the Strength-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) framework to highlight how tools such as wikis, blogs, forum and microblogs can shorten and increase the quality of early design decisions. Furthermore it elaborates on how the design team can enhance its perception of the needs to be addressed and leverage its capability to develop solutions for the task at hand.

Human-centred approaches to problem-solving have gained significant popularity in recent years. Among them, Design Thinking (DT) has received widespread attention, particularly through the work of design firms like IDEO and the Stanford d.school. Needfinding, idea generation, and prototyping techniques have often been applied to design Product-Service Systems (PSS) ‘experiences’, where tangible products and intangible services are integrated to design value-adding solutions for customers and users. Yet, the literature does not fully explain how the DT body of knowledge can effectively be applied to intentionally design PSS in different contexts. This chapter reviews existing literature on the usage of the DT method and tools in PSS design, presenting a list of recommendations that emerged from applying DT in co-production mode with companies in the Swedish manufacturing sector.

The emerging industrial business partnerships, which feature cross-functional and cross-company development efforts, raise the barrier for the establishment of effective knowledge sharing practices in the larger organization. This chapter aims to highlight the role of knowledge as a key enabler for effective engineering activities in the light of such emerging enterprise collaboration models. Knowledge Enabled Engineering (KEE) is presented as an approach to enhance the extended organization’s capability to establish effective collaboration among its parts, in spite of different organizational structures, technologies or processes. KEE is analysed in its constituent parts, highlighting areas, methods and tools that are particularly interesting for leveraging companies’ knowledge sharing capabilities.

The main aim of this paper is to present a methodology developed within the European Project VIVACE to guide the design and implementation of a Knowledge Enabled Engineering (KEE) system in a Virtual Enterprise. The proposed methodology tries to overcome some of the limitations which characterise traditional methods for Target Cascading, promoting a more collaborative and iterative approach to derive system specifications (in terms of advanced knowledge functionalities) from initial high-level targets. Social and behavioural aspects of Knowledge Management play a crucial role when many different users, knowledge experts, and process owners are involved in the Knowledge Management System (KMS) development. A well designed methodology is needed, therefore, to enhance communication and information sharing among design teams, to promote requirements merging and to take care both of the technological and behavioural aspects of the implementation. Initial business targets have been step-by-step decomposed into a set of sub-problems (Service Requirements, Knowledge Issues, and Knowledge Challenges) in the form of simple sentences in natural language. Then Quality Function Deployment (QFD) matrixes have been used to identify the set of functionalities to be implemented in the system, addressing the most important knowledge-related problems outlined in the cascading activity.

The paper proposes a framework for analysing the performances of product-service systems (PSSs) development processes using a balanced scorecard (BSC) as an instrument to guide the implementation and the evaluation of new methods and tools. Emerging from a case study in the aerospace industry, the paper discusses the main challenges in PSS development and proposes a performance measurement framework for PSS development based on multi-criteria indicators. Finally, the benefits of a framework for PSS development performance measurement are discussed.

The Product-Service System (PSS) paradigm is recognized as a means for companies to increase the value perceived by the customers, thus gaining competitive advantage beyond traditional ‘pure product’ offerings. Researches have shown the necessity to rethink design processes in a PSS context, in order to drive the successful integration of product and service features in early design phases. In the last few years, several new approaches have been proposed, however little attention has been paid on how to translate these approaches into action and on how to evaluate their performances and effectiveness. This paper proposes a framework for analysing the performances in PSS development process using a Balanced Scorecard approach, as a tool to guide the implementation and the evaluation of new methods and tools in the early design phases. The paper starts with discussing the main challenges encountered when designing PSS, and then, adopting an aerospace industry as an example, to propose an application of the Balance Scorecard for the implementation and measurement of PSS development. Finally, the main pros and cons are discussed in relation to strengths and weaknesses of using balanced scorecard in PSS development. The framework developed in this paper can provide a useful guidance for the managers in measuring the performances of the PSS development process.

Many companies have been using lessons learned practices as one oftheir key knowledge management initiatives to capitalize on past experiences.For product development companies, learning from product lifecycle phasesgives a true competitive advantage to improve the next generation of products.However, companies are still struggling in capturing and sharing lessonslearned and applying them in new situations. Based on this consideration, thepaper proposes a video-based approach–using social media technologies–as away to leverage continuous capturing and sharing lessons learned from productlifecycle phases to design practices. The paper presents the findings of a casestudy within the aerospace industry, which investigates the current industrialpractices with regard to experience feedback, and illustrates the implementationof a video-based approach. Further, the conceptual mock-up of video-based lessons learned sharing portal and its social platform that are aimed to support the design practices are illustrated.

This is a qualitative single case study of a geographically distributed student team that experienced a quite different graduate course, compared to previous year's. This was due to the restrictions placed upon them following coronavirus lockdowns. With already ongoing research, and continuous development of the course, the authors had documented individual reflections and identified patterns and behaviours that seemingly determined the quality of the end result, as well as the students expectations and experiences. Semi-structured interviews, surveys and the author's individual reflection notes were already in place as part of the larger research scope and when the student team during the covid-19 year showed unexpected performance and results, the authors decided to pause the larger research scope and focus on this unique single case and capture those learnings. Not knowing how the Covid-19 situation evolves and leaning on insights from previous years, as well as this unique year, the aim with this paper is to describe the unique Covid-19 year amd share knowledge that can help improve and evolve the development of this longlived collaborative graduate student course, and other similar distributed team contexts.

This research investigates globally dispersed innovation teams involved in explorative projects within an engineering graduate course employing problem-based learning. Utilizing insights from a longitudinal study, the objective is to identify how to enhance both individual learning and team performance, thereby increasing the likelihood of a successful outcome. Initial observations revealed common patterns in learning experiences among the top-performing teams, prompting further investigation into how supporting cohorts might positively influence both team performance and students’ learning experiences throughout the course. In addition to advancing comprehension of innovation team performance, the study introduces two lightweight tools designed as shared visual representations of the team’s exploration journey. These tools can assist supporting cohorts in guiding teams effectively. This research augments the existing body of knowledge surrounding the achievement of breakthrough innovations. It provides understanding about how to facilitate team performance and individual learning within globally dispersed innovation teams undertaking explorative projects. The proposed lightweight tools offer practical solutions to enhance the supporting cohort’s ability to guide and impact team performance and individual learning experiences. This study holds implications for academia and industry, particularly organizations reliant on radical innovation for competitiveness and future-proving. Lastly, the study’s findings could inform the design and delivery of future problem-oriented, project-organized learning-based courses in engineering education.

As large manufacturing incumbents are adopting digital technologies and shifting their business models from selling products to solving problems, through PSS (product-service-system) solutions, their development processes need to shift as well. Organizational ambidexterity, the ability to both explore new opportunities and exploit existing customer offerings, is considered to be crucial to companies’ current and future success. In this study it is observed that a gap between exploration and exploitation work streams lead to promising conceptual PSS solutions never reaching a revenue generating stage. This is because product-centricity along with exploitation-optimized processes and mindsets are not equipped to carry the integrated solutions further, from proven concept to market ready solution. This article summarizes a multiple case study, where systematic innovation engineering work has resulted in promising conceptual PSS solutions never reaching market launch. In addition to the in-depth case studies, leaders of exploration-oriented teams in manufacturing incumbents shared their insights which confirmed that the problem is common across companies and industries, and several roadblocks are general. One of the authors has been responsible for a successful shift from a product-centric to an integrated solution-oriented organization and contributed insights from that experience to this study. The authors suggest that the gap between explore and exploit, and the shift from product-centric to PSS-oriented can be managed through an approach where ambidexterity is infused into the entire organization and exploration is demystified, enabling a transparent and concerted shift.

This paper covers research about how Corporate Innovation Hubs, CIHs, in Silicon Valley are managed and supported by their corporatemotherships and how their likeliness of success can be increased by consciousand proactive management and support. To embrace the cultural difference as a competitive advantage and learning experience is important. Clear intentions,expectations, team constellation, reporting level and finding the right individualas head of the CIH are identified as crucial factors to consider.

This paper discusses views on decision support in product development to identify factors of relevance when designing computer-based decision sup- port for total offers. Providing services in form of physical artefacts of- fered as ‘functions per unit’ is at the heart of total offers. Total offers gain access to possibilities to ‘design in’ value added characteristics into the physical artefact, e.g., maintenance, monitoring, training, remanufacture. Contemporary computer tools seem to be insufficient to support a GO/NO GO decision for total offers. Relevant factors to take into consideration are to support learning and provide the decision makers with insights in a number of plausible ‘what-if’ scenarios to improve the solution space.

A new vision in manufacturing is to develop product-service integrated value solutions. Today, few firms have fully realized this vision because they are not able to support the reasoning in the early stages of design. The purpose of this paper is to discuss engineers' cognitive challenge when replacing the core product rationale with value logic. The paper problematizes engineering design by dividing knowledge into the categories technically constructed (explicit) and socially constructed (tacit). In doing so, this study contributes the assumed effects of a perspective shift that could guide the development of computational tools.

To support the application of automated machines andcollaborative robots in unstructured environments like in the mining,agriculture and construction sector the needs of the human co-workershould be investigated to ensure a safe and productive collaboration.The empirical study presented includes the prototyping of a solution forhuman-machine communication, which has been supported by a designthinking approach. An understanding of the human needs had beencreated through jobsite observations and semi-structured interviewswith human workforces working in close proximity to heavy mobileequipment. The results shows that trust and communication have a bigimpact on the jobsite collaboration.

Manufacturing industry is expressing an increased interest in knowledge management due to the extension towards aservice provision business model. However, the inclusion of softer service aspects indicates that the common view onknowledge management as a way to control and monitor a technical process have limitations. Sharing expertise is anadditional way of managing knowledge particularly with the intentions to make experience based knowledgeorganizational available. By studying product developers’ daily work, especially how they perceive that they apply andshare knowledge, we problematize knowledge activities in product-service development to discuss the establishedknowledge management activities. The paper suggests some considerations to support the development of aknowledge base for product-service design.

Engineering educations deploy capstone courses as a way of supporting students’ transition into the engineering profession. This paper presents a global collaborative product development project affected by several constraints due to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. The paper analyses the students' journey, as they navigated the final part of the project, drawing on learnings for the coaching cohort to support projects with similar levels of autonomy. The analysis uses a hunter-gatherer model to analyze the journey of iterations in search of a meaningful problem to solve. By utilizing this type of tool the supporting cohort can maintain a dialogue about the journey towards a vision and having a foundation of when to nudge, when to push back, and when to refrain from involving in their work.

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In product development, lead-time reduction, cost reduction, and quality improvement are issues that companies want to improve on to increase competitiveness. One recent approach to reach this - particularly in the aerospace industry where the complexity of product offers is steadily increasing - is to manage risk by forming virtual enterprises. A virtual enterprise is a network of partner companies that join on equal terms when an opportunity arises to develop a product offer, e.g. a jet engine offer, in a more agile manner than if any of the partners would realise it by themselves. They therefore team up to share risk, investment and resources - to in return also share revenue and profit. A driver for the formation of the virtual enterprise is the ability to effectively utilise partner knowledge assets. However, when sharing and managing knowledge effectively across the virtual enterprise, current practices have yet to evolve to meet the needs of knowledge workers, who may come from different aerospace companies, have different roles, belong to different disciplines and that may also be situated in geographically dispersed locations.

Improving product development includes allowing developers from all disciplines to know - as early as possible in the product development process - more about the customer needs, the desired product properties, and the downstream impact of the decisions they choose to make throughout the process. Knowing about the impact in downstream phases would allow for significant time and cost savings due to the avoidance of unnecessary and expensive rework that would otherwise occur much further on in the product's life cycle.

Among other things, a virtual enterprise can start organising and mapping the knowledge assets available in their teams, and information overload can be managed by assuring that the right knowledge ends up with the right person, to mention but a few things that can facilitate the everyday work of engineers and their colleagues. When working in a product development project, the virtual enterprise needs to assess the quality of the created knowledge as early as possible to devise the correct actions early. In this thesis, a Gated Maturity Assessment technique including the concept of knowledge maturity has been developed as an example of an improved stage-gate decision-making process. With this approach development teams are able to assess the knowledge maturity level in the content and rationale that is put forward as a basis for a decision - as opposed to only assessing the raw data of the results (i.e. thrust, weight, fuel burn, etc.). Knowledge maturity is used to support decision makers when in the process of assessing a decision base to make a decision whether to go ahead, abort the process, or order rework to be done. Naturally, if the decision base is poor, a decision to go ahead should probably not be taken, as the consequences might be negative. In assessing maturity, decision makers can determine at decision points if the knowledge base is good enough to move forward to the next step in the jet engine component design, if there is need for rework, and what specific areas need to be improved. Decision makers can divert and focus resources to areas of importance due to, for instance, too low maturity levels.

Knowledge maturity is a way to - using a criteria scale that prescribes the knowledge needed at each level - help development teams assess and visualise how well they know what they know, and subsequently, what they need to know. This thesis explores the feasibility of using knowledge maturity as a way of supporting knowledge engineering in the context of a development process in aeronautics.

In today’s fast-paced industry where fight for market share is fierce and reaching the market ahead of competition imperative, product development is a target for lead-time reductions. In this context, in product development in stage-gate processes, decisions need to be made even though knowledge and information are scarce and flawed. The challenge is how to support the decisions that are made in light of uncertainty and ambiguity. The thesis moves from analysing the role of the stage-gate process within the aerospace industry. The stage-gate process was more than a decision making mechanism, and instead a mechanism that facilitated communication, discussion and knowledge sharing between team members, as well as supported knowledge creation and shaping of the boundaries between people’s different perceptions of the knowledge base. However, the communicative and negotiative function of the stage-gate was highly dependent on the ability of the participating individuals to reflect on the status and quality of the available knowledge assets used throughout the process. To make this reflective activity an explicit part of the stage-gate practice, this thesis proposes the application of a knowledge maturity concept at the gates to raise the decision makers’ awareness of the status of the knowledge assets handled at the decision point. The knowledge maturity concept considers three basic dimensions: input, method/tool and experience/expertise in assessing the knowledge base maturity. The scale is intended to act as a boundary object, facilitating the knowledge creation process by highlighting the current status of the knowledge base and making stakeholders aware of the nature of the project’s uncertainties and ambiguities. In the knowledge maturity concept, its purpose is to support design teams at the gates in taking appropriate action, mitigating risk and focusing their efforts on improving the knowledge assets where it is needed most, regarding the situation at hand and, finally, to make more confident decisions.The thesis was developed within the EU FP6 VIVACE (Value Improvement through a Virtual Aeronautical Collaborative Enterprise) and EU FP7 CRESCENDO (Collaborative and Robust Engineering using Simulation Capability Enabling Next Design Optimisation) projects, and within the Faste Laboratory, a VINNOVA Excellence Centre involving partners from the Swedish manufacturing industry.

This paper investigates decision making in the stage-gate process used by an aerospace manufacturer. More specifically, it focuses on the way decision makers deal with uncertainties and ambiguities when making decisions. The stage-gate model was found to be a discussion trigger - a boundary negotiating artefact - through which stakeholders bring issues to the table, reflect on uncertainties, and decide in what areas more knowledge is needed. Managers should be aware that the knowledge base might not always be perfect and should make use of the sensemaking capabilities of the stage-gate model and the gate meeting to mitigate and improve the knowledge base. This paper elaborates on formalized knowledge-based criteria so as to support this evaluation of the knowledge base.

In the production of automotive body components, fixtures are an important part of the ongoing work on geometrical assurance. The fixture is uniquely defined for each component, and the design and configuration of these are time-consuming and takes a lot of effort. The objective with this paper is to explore the use of a design automation approach and application to semi-automate the configuration process of the fixture product. The paper presents an approach to automate the configuration of the fixtures in a flexible way, by reverse engineering the configuration of the fixture product from a generic blueprint that represents the expected outcome of the process, using a knowledge-based engineering approach applied to a computer aided design (CAD) environment. A reverse-engineered design automation toolbox for a CAD-software is developed. The toolbox is developed to lead a user through the configuration process, in the way that the experts want it done, end-to-end, making use of some unconventional solutions from a design automation perspective.

The development of complex products, characterized by long lifecycles and deep supply chains, requires enhanced capabilities to assess, in an early design stage, the value of a solution not merely from a requirement fulfillment perspective. The paper proposes a conceptual scenario, described in terms of activities, inputs, outputs, actors and mechanisms, which details how aircraft components can be developed and assessed with a focus on their value contribution at system level. The scenario proposes a set of methodological and technological tools needed to enable value assessment in preliminary design, and has been created and preliminary validated together with major European aerospace manufacturers. The importance of being able to communicate the lifecycle value contribution of design solutions during the development work emerged clearly from the study. In this spirit, an approach to visualize such contribution directly in a 3D CAD model (across a set of value criteria, dimensions and drivers) has been proposed and it is currently under development.

In light of emerging product development trends, such as Product-Service Systems, manufacturing organizations are obliged to collaborate across functional and organizational borders. Hence, companies are increasingly investigating how to leverage knowledge management practices to enhance their dynamic learning capabilities to achieve continuous process improvements. Many researchers assert that lessons learned practices are possible ways for organizational learning, which allows for continuous capturing and sharing of experiential knowledge across boundaries in order to learn both from mistakes and successes. However, many organizations fall short in capturing and sharing lessons from projects and applying them in new situations. The purpose of this paper is to propose a video-based approach and related guidelines for capturing and sharing lessons learned in a dynamic manner across functional and organizational boundaries. Based on laboratory experiments as well as validation activities conducted in collaboration with an aerospace manufacturer, this paper compares the video-based approach with a more traditional text-based approach of documenting lessons learned from projects. The paper describes the results of testing activities conducted with a video-based lessons learned prototype and the authors reflect on its implications for design practice management in the aerospace industry.

Reports about the depletion and pollutant of the earth by human interference and the increasing need for urbanised areas require us to think differently about how we go about achieving this increased urbanisation. In this context, urban mining, where demolition sites are mined for increased recycling and value extraction. Due to high specialisation of construction equipment for this context, as well as sustainability being an important factor, product-service systems are suggested as a way forward in this area. This paper presents key topics that needs to be addressed when developing sustainable product-service systems for the urban mining segment. The idea is to transform from a traditional construction and demolition perspective towards a PSS-based construction product for an urban mining environment, incorporating a circular economy perspective. A modification to the common business model notation of business model canvas, with guiding questions is suggested. Opportunities for improved sustainability lies both in application – within an urban mining site – and in the enabling technology – when technology is specialised, owned by the provider, and utilised by multiple partners. 

An extension towards a service perspective in manufacturing firms challenge decision making in early development phases. This addition in business models challenges the established knowledge base, which is focused on product aspects. A service perspective makes it necessary to assess the team's competences in another way. The knowledge maturity scales presented in this paper stems from a method to judge technology readiness, yet the knowledge perspective adopted highlights the issue of whether this approach is readily adopted or not. In this paper, a pragmatic view of the term knowledge, as found in previous empirical data, is used to discuss and propose a way to visualize the current knowledge state in a development team. The paper concludes on a rationale for visualization of knowledge maturity. Based on this, further improvement of the scales to support a service perspective on products can be done.

Today, a new knowledge economy and more service-based offerings are commonly mentioned as a challenge for manufacturing companies. This challenge addresses the companies’ knowledge base and the traditional engineering expertise areas. The report starts from an assumption that there are differences in how knowledge is managed, as well as differences in the intentions to why it is managed. Based on this assumption, the purpose in the report is two-folded. First, the purpose is to conceptualize different facets of knowledge within a framework of technical product development. Second, the purpose is that the report serves as a trigger for discussions and reflections on existing practices in industrial workshops. So, despite that the report does not provide the “right” answers to these questions; they still guide the work in our research:• What is actually managed in every-day engineering project work?• And, for what purposes?The work accounted for in the report comes from a literature review and our jointefforts in understanding the research area from a theoretical perspective. First general views on knowledge is presented, including its classification in different ways, compared to information and data, as well as its division into tacit and explicit knowledge, or practical skills and theoretical knowledge. Human factors, including how people search for information, is also presented. Then a more explicit focus on technical knowledge is presented, showing the shift from knowledge as an artefact to a social and personal perspective in recent years. This also encompasses discussing the capabilities and knowledge of an engineer. A contribution of this report is the conceptualization of different facets of engineering knowledge; especially the more social aspects of engineering knowledge have been highlighted.

Genetic algorithms have a lot of properties that makes it a good choice when one needs to solve very complicated problems. The performance of genetic algorithms is affected by the parameters that are used. Optimization of the parameters for the genetic algorithm is one of the most popular research fields of genetic algorithms. One of the reasons for this is because of the complicated relation between the parameters and factors such as the complexity of the problem. This thesis describes what happens when time constraints are added to this problem. One of the most important parameters is population size and we have found by testing a well known set of optimization benchmark problems that the optimal population size is not the same when time constraints were involved.

Streamlining new product development forces companies to make decisions on preliminary information. This paper considers this challenge within the context of project management in the aerospace sector, and in particular the development of product-service systems.  The concept of knowledge maturity is explored as a means to provide practical decision support, which increases decision makers' awareness of the knowledge base and supports cross-boundary discussions on the perceived maturity of available knowledge, thereby identifying and mitigating limitations. Requirements are elicited from previous research on knowledge maturity in the aerospace industry and a knowledge maturity model is developed through five industry-based workshops.

Societies across the globe are facing many unprecedented challenges; climate change, pandemics, and resource depletion, just to name a few. These societal challenges, the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda, and companies’ demands about knowledge and skills required from future employees have put pressure on academia to develop suitable education programmes in many disciplines, including product development and mechanical engineering. In this position paper, we present our work undertaken in phase-1 of the development of a new MSc programme in the field of product development and mechanical engineering at Blekinge Institute of Technology, aimed at addressing changing societal needs and demands of the future industry. We employ a generic design thinking approach, starting from key stakeholder needs with iterative execution of needfinding, benchmarking, and ideation. In these steps, we use several data collection and generation methods such as interviews, surveys, and workshops. The main outcome of phase-1 is the overall programme structure, consisting of three main focus streams — the engineering design core, three academic specializations (Product-Service Systems Design, Data-Driven Design, and Simulation- Driven Design), and the practical application profiling. Based on our experience of developing the overall programme structure, we offer recommendations for developing new programmes in this area.

In manufacturing, metal parts can be joined using a laser as a welding tool, i.e. laser welding. Despite huge amount of research over the years, the process is neither sufficiently understood nor mathematically predictable. This study aims to holistically analyze the knowledge management issues occurring in laser welding. Emerging from observations and semi-structured interviews from industry and academy, the complexity and the criticalities of the process as well as the current knowledge transfers is explained and analyzed, using a knowledge lifecycle framework as a reference. Besides enhanced awareness of the limiting issues, information and knowledge visualization, e.g. knowledge maps, is identified as a key for progress in the community. The Matrix Flow Chart is suggested as an alternative descaled map of process changes.

With more projects in today’s industry being global it is important to support the people collaborating in these projects. Travel is expensive and time consuming and is not viable in the long run. Although some travel is necessary it is important for people to meet virtually instead. In many cases it is difficult for companies to collaborate because they do not use the same tools for these virtual meetings. Due to restrictions with IT security it is also difficult and expensive to implement every new tool their partner companies use. One solution could be a portal that facilitates connecting users with different virtual meeting tools. Using Web Services to bridge the different protocols it would be possible to connect two software packages that are using different standards for virtual meetings. With a tool as this it would be possible for chosen companies to collaborate closely online although they have incompatible software packages. Companies can select their solutions on the basis of their needs and do not have to implement a new solution or modify their existing setup to accommodate new partner needs. Finally, people would only need to learn the one tool which is available in their own company.

VIVACE is an EC-funded integrated project that addresses aeronautics´ vision for the year 2020. More specifically VIVACE intends to achieve cost reduction and time reduction in new aircraft development. VIVACE consists of three sub-projects where the two first extracts problems from aircraft and engine industries respectively. The third sub-project collects these problems and develops advanced capabilities (methods, tools, guidelines, etc.). The ’Knowledge Enabled Engineering’ (KEE) work package in sub-project three focuses issues on concerns associated with knowledge within an extended enterprise. This includes both Knowledge Based Engineering (KBE) issues, but also more general questions about engineering knowledge. The work starts in analysing requirements from use cases via finding existing solutions to conducting tests in the form of pilots. Finally the knowledge acquired is disseminated to both the aeronautics community and also to a wider audience in Europe and the rest of the world.

In aeronautics industry today, companies collaborate closely in virtual enterprises to develop products and solutions that are more integrated and more complex, and that aims to target larger responsibilities regarding the product life-cycle. On top of this, lead-time and development costs needs to be reduced.<br/>The 7 Day Proposal (7DP) is the conceptual name of a framework wherein a customized proposal is produced by a virtual enterprise consortium within seven days from a received request for proposal. This is substantially shorter than what is current practice today and implies that new methods, tools and ways of working are needed. Today, in offer processes, time is lost because of insufficient, or immature, available information and knowledge at gate reviews when decisions are due, causing time consuming iterations. <br/>The Gated Maturity Assessment (GMA) concept is intended to help reduce these costly iterations by targeting the ambiguity at these gate reviews in order to reduce the uncertainty in decision base. <br/>Other frameworks using maturity include Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) and the Capability Maturity Model (CMM). TRL is an artefact-focused framework developed by NASA to assess space technology maturity. CMM is a process-focused framework for assessing organisations' software development process capability (maturity). <br/>The GMA is a concept for assessing the maturity of the knowledge that goes into a gate review (i.e. a decision document). The GMA is intended to support decision makers by assuring confidence in these decision points and thereby reducing the number of iterations, hereby reducing lead-time and increases the quality of the process.<br/>This paper reports on the development of the GMA concept from the 7DP use case, and also the development of a support tool intended for use in the 7DP process. <br/>Essentially, the 7DP process is a stage-gate process like many corporate product development processes with a number of decision gates. Therefore there is a future wish to move towards an engineering design context with this concept. <br/>The work is part of the 70 million € European project VIVACE where GMA is part of a Knowledge Enabled Engineering solution to the 7DP use case.

In production of automotive components, control-measuring is an important activity to assure that geometries meet expected tolerances. This is done via randomly taking parts out of production for control-measuring in a fixture. This fixture is both a tedious and repetitive product to design and configure. The aim of this paper is therefore to present an approach to adopt a design automation strategy towards supporting the configuration of fixtures and to discuss opportunities for moving towards a Product-Service System-paradigm in this domain. This paper reports on a development of a design automation demonstrator to configure fixtures for control-measuring. The demonstrator has been developed in a commercial CAD-environment and will be deployed through a web-based interface. The paper concludes with a discussion on PSS-opportunities and how to drive this with a Knowledge-Based Engineering-modelling approach. 

Innovation is often measured based on how the product performs on the market. This makes it difficult tomeasure the performance of a team since the time to develop a product may take several years. In this paperwe show the importance of creating a common ground and facilitation in a team, two aspects that is not easymeasure, but should be assessed. We also discuss innovation on three interrelated organizational levels, theoperational, which is the development team and in focus in this paper, the managerial and the strategic level.We found that companies need indicators to measure and/or assess performance on all three levels and thatmore research is needed to find the inter-links between the levels to prescribe measures and assessment points.

Several studies have suggested virtual enterprises (VEs) as a promising new form of organization. VEs are created to gain several benefits, for example, risk-and-revenue sharing, entering new markets, etc. However, in this study we focus on increasing the innovation in the VE consortiums. Based on past experience and knowledge from related fields, we argue that VE consortiums in the Swedish industry are rare. Thus, this study highlights and explores the challenges, particularly four areas: networking capability, information and communication technology (ICT) usage, knowledge engineering, and team based innovation. These areas contribute to the facilitation of VE creation and its effective operation. Each of these areas is discussed and propositions are formed which will guide the future research. Finally, we have discussed the concept of innovation driven virtual enterprise that combines open innovation ideology with the virtual enterprise concept.

In stage-gate processes decisions are made based on the knowledge and information developed during the preceding phase. The purpose of this study is to explore the state-of-practice in industry regarding the assessment of knowledge and information at gates. The result indicates that gate reviews relate mainly to assessments of technical performance and function. Relatively little attention is given to assess the quality of the knowledge base, making it difficult to identify outdated, irrelevant and non-applicable information and knowledge. Further, tacit knowledge plays an important role in the decision-making process, as reviewers ask for the design rationale and further evidence of what has been done and why. However, evaluating such knowledge is currently a poorly understood aspect of gate reviews. It is concluded that even though the specific focus of such meetings is not on the evaluation of knowledge and information, the opportunity to work towards a better support of such activities is promising, especially since the respondents perceive the benefits that come from an increased attention to assessments of both the explicit and tacit knowledge base used in gate reviews.

To reduce uncertainty in decisions, engineers experiment with models, such as, exploring what-if scenarios, and thus increase knowledge. Still, because modelling is an idealisation of reality, there is often substantial uncertainty involved, and this decision makers less confident to lean onto models alone when making decisions. The aim of this paper is to conceptualize a design support for improving confidence and validity in models, by communicating uncertainties from modelling and simulation to relevant stakeholders. The paper reports on empirical data from a research profile workshop. The findings illustrate the importance of communicating uncertainties from models between relevant stakeholders in order to drive action. The paper then presents an approach to visualize model maturity levels as well as impact levels in relation to one or several aggregated models. With this approach, focus can move to discuss the knowledge about the knowledge that is created from modelling, and to facilitate discussions on a meta-level about the modelling and simulation. This is exemplified by a test scenario where a multi-disciplinary modelling and simulation of an asphalt roller is presented.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how knowledge is managed and shared within product development in an enterprise collaboration context in the aerospace manufacturing industry.

This paper is based on a qualitative survey that was sent to seven companies in the European aerospace manufacturing industry, focusing on how they perceive knowledge sharing, and on common problems and challenges with knowledge sharing.

Lack of trust and fear of losing competitive advantage is identified as a problem area. Further, information and communication technology is seen as an important enabler. In this area it is found that it is important to develop strategies for knowledge sharing in collaboration with business developers, engineering, and IT architects from various organizations in the extended enterprise.

Product/Service-Systems (PSS) strategies are a part of an overall movement towards a service-based society that is increasingly knowledge and information based. Knowledge sharing for cross-company innovation and development projects has been recognized as troublesome, since disparate knowledge domains must be brought together in a cohesive way to support both creativity and innovations. Stage-Gate process models are widely used in collaborative development projects but they do not suggest how to assess the degree of understanding of the produced information and the results in projects. A successful assessment of knowledge should be used for designing the next development steps in form of work methods and tools. This paper describes an approach for supporting Knowledge Management and Knowledge Sharing in the development of PSS. Finally, a concept for supporting knowledge assessment is proposed, based on designing and visualizing knowledge paths.

An often neglected topic in idea management research is the continuity and stability of current idea management practices. This study addresses this topic by following a hand-over of ideas from a project to the line organization in a company. Moreover, idea portfolios are proposed and empirically explored as a means of managing and further developing these ideas. This particular idea-capturing scheme is believed to incorporate both codification and personalization approaches in the management of ideas. Twenty-one (21) semi-structured interviews, as well as observations, were conducted during a year, both before and during the implementation of idea portfolios at the company. Results from the study show the importance of considering the recipient of a codification effort in order for codification to become a constructive element rather than a barrier. Another finding is that different stages of maturity and levels of activity should be handled when managing ideas. Therefore, an idea portfolio is something of a hybrid between an idea bank and a register of on-going activities. Managing ideas in a transparent way was also shown to have its pros and cons. Increased transparency can both provide enhanced legitimacy for working with an idea, and increase the accountability of an idea, and can therefore be perceived as an obstacle. Finally, the shared responsibility of an idea that is the consequence of working with an idea portfolio can make the line manager something of an “accomplice”. This in turn helps in propelling the development of the idea forward.

Manufacturing companies continuously deal with development of innovations. Many of these are cancelled on the way, in gate meetings. This paper investigates why technologies are cancelled, and on which basis managers make decisions. The paper is based on a study from the automotive industry with interviews with different stakeholders in the gates. The most common reasons for stopping projects were time, cost and technology readiness. Gut feeling is found to be an important factor when evaluating projects. This paper concludes that managers need to understand the role of intuition and query for this subjective information in addition to objective measures.

This paper contributes to the discussion on value models as decision support in early design. Emerging from data collected through semi-structured interviews with 20 professionals in 3 manufacturing companies, the paper highlights the limitation of current development practices to promote cross-functional knowledge sharing about the stakeholders' lifecycle expectations to be met. This limits the ability to make decisions about aspects of value that are difficult to assess and quantify. The objective of the paper is then to propose the use of value models as 'boundary objects' to increase shared awareness about the design intent, triggering negotiations towards more value-adding design decisions. This role of the value model as a boundary object is studied through design experiments, using a combination of protocol analysis and observation technique on the video-recorded material.