Today, increased global competition and regulatory demands push organizations to find innovative ways to design and create value. One way is to examine Product-Service System offerings, which enable more stable revenues and foster tighter collaboration and value co-creation between the provider and customer. However, this often means adopting a System-of-Systems (SoS) approach where the value creation is dependent on successful collaboration between constituent systems and actors. SoS also leads to higher complexity and uncertainty, making them more challenging to design, especially in the early stages where knowledge is limited. Therefore, this thesis investigates how to leverage simulations and operational data to explore the value creation in SoS design.

Methodologically, the work adopts a Design Research Methodology and Participatory Action Research approach, combining systematic literature reviews with six industrial case studies in the construction machinery and climate resilience sectors. The case studies originate from a series of research projects conducted in collaboration with various industrial and public partners between 2020 and 2025. 

The research introduces two main contributions. First, the Value–Data Framework, which operationalizes Value-Driven Design by linking value modeling to operational datasets, enabling transparent and quantitative assessment of value creation. The value model introduces a two-step value hierarchy to enhance transparency and address the growing complexity of SoS. Operational data is defined and classified clearly to show where and how it can be leveraged. The second contribution, an Integrated Simulation Platform, equips design teams with the ability to develop effective simulations for SoS modeling in early design stages. The platform explicitly addresses multi-fidelity to guide developers in balancing the computational complexity and accuracy. Finally, both contributions are demonstrated in quarry case studies to validate and highlight their usefulness. Lastly, the SoS simulations are contextualized for Digital Twinning, and the use cases and needs for deploying Digital Twins in climate resilience efforts are examined.

The findings advance theory by bridging Value-Driven Design and SoS simulations, and provide practical guidelines for managing fidelity trade-offs and data–value integration. Industrial implications include improved decision support for electrification, autonomy, and resilience strategies. 

Product-Service System (PSS) development prioritizes the technical aspects of implementing Artificial Intelligence (AI), overlooking the strategic rationale behind its adoption. This paper investigates the impact of AI on value co-creation within industrial contexts by analyzing successful AI applications in PSS development across diverse domains like industrial systems engineering and healthcare technology. Through a multiple case study approach, this paper aims to explore the strategic motivations for using AI and its influence on the co-creation process. The analysis reveals several key benefits of AI adoption. Firstly, it fosters collaborative and iterative development, empowering both internal teams and external stakeholders to actively participate in value co-creation. Secondly, AI helps uncover novel value propositions that might remain hidden through traditional methods thus boosting the value co-creation. Finally, AI acts as a catalyst for building dynamic knowledge ecosystems. By facilitating data-driven insights and collaboration, AI enables continuous learning and adoption within the co-creation process. 

The manufacturing sector is witnessing a paradigm shift toward servitization, where companies are transitioning from selling products to offering product-service systems. This shift creates additional challenges, where the providers must ensure the expected value throughout the operational phase of the solution. Especially when dealing with a system-of-systems (SoS), evaluating performance across diverse contexts and business models while understanding the interconnectedness between systems becomes critical. To address these challenges during the design phase, this article presents a novel integrated simulation framework that supports the development team in exploring value from a SoS perspective. This framework utilizes agent-based simulation and offers three key features: multifidelity, modular and multidisciplinary. The applicability of the proposed framework is further demonstrated in a quarry industry case.

Increased stakeholder expectations and tougher global competition push the manufacturing industries to develop more complex solutions, introducing numerous uncertainties in design decision-making. Incorporating changeability is one way to systematically deal with uncertainty, which requires dealing with the identification, valuation, and quantification of changeability during the early design stages. Besides, when considering a system-of-systems (SoS) problem, it necessitates optimizing the portfolio of options within the SoS while considering the transition “in” and “of” the system combinatorially. In this light, this paper presents the Changeability Assessment in Systems during Early Design (CASED) method for development teams to create value-robust systems in the face of uncertainty. The CASED method utilizes epochs and eras to represent uncertainty and analyzes the impact of changing system configurations and control policies on overall system value. Considering transitions “in” and “of” the system involves solving a linear assignment problem to minimize the switch costs. A dynamic programming procedure for an era finds the avenues when change shall be exercised. Iterating through several eras, a map of the expected mean value and expected standard deviation is generated for all designs, which serves as a guide for decisions concerning changeability. The applicability of the method is further confirmed through a fleet of haulers operating in a quarry.

Increasing sustainability expectations requires support for the design of systems that are reactive in minimizing potential negative impact and proactive in guiding engineering decision-making toward more value-robust long-term decisions. This article identifies a gap in the methodological support for the design of circular systems, building on the hypothesis that computer-based simulation models will drive the development of more value-robust systems designed to behave positively in a changeable operational environment during the whole lifecycle. The article presents a framework for value-robust circular systems design, complementing the current approaches for circular design aimed at increasing decision-makers' awareness about the complexity of circular systems to be designed. The framework is theoretically described and demonstrated through its applications in four case studies in the field of construction machinery investigating new circular solutions for the future of mining, quarrying and road construction. The framework supports the development of more resilient and sustainable systems, strengthening the feedback loop between exploring new technologies, proposing innovative concepts and evaluating system performance.

Today, Manufacturing companies are adopting a servitization strategy and Product-Service System model to enhance value and remain competitive. Often, this transition also means to embrace a System-of-Systems (SoS) perspective. Concurrently, companies face challenges with volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environments. One way to tackle VUCA is to utilize simulation modeling. However, developing SoS simulations can be complex and cumbersome. This paper extracts lessons learned from six case studies to identify effective and ineffective practices in developing simulation models. The analysis has led to nine design principles for more effective simulation modeling. Furthermore, the paper explores simulation techniques for modeling SoS and discusses effective VUCA management. Finally, the paper proposes four future research directions to advance SoS simulation research.

Extended Reality (XR) is increasingly relevant in engineering education due to its potential to enhance learning through immersive experiences. Despite growing interest, limited research addresses how students themselves perceive the role of XR in learning within the CDIO (Conceive–Design–Implement–Operate) framework. This study investigates how XR, particularly Virtual Reality (VR), supports three CDIO objectives—creating design alternatives, evaluating concepts, and implementing solutions—based on the experiences of master students in a mechanical engineering program. Using a qualitative case study approach, semi-structured interviews were analyzed inductively and thematically. Results show that students view VR as a powerful tool for understanding complex phenomena, visualizing consequences, and motivating engagement. The findings suggest that VR can enhance engineering students’ capabilities and promote deeper learning when implemented thoughtfully. This work contributes a student-centered perspective to XR in education, encouraging further research into its responsible and effective integration across the CDIO framework.

Climate change is one of the most important challenges for society to solve. However, it cannot be fixed solely through greenhouse gas reductions; it requires proactive efforts. This paper investigates how Digital Twins (DT) can serve as a support for Climate Change Adaptation (CCA), which is required to achieve climate resilience. Data was collected from a workshop targeting the role of DT in CCA, which consisted of 92 participants from the public sector in various European countries. The data was analyzed and disseminated to establish guiding principles on how DT can be deployed and designed to best fit the characteristics of CCA work. Firstly, use cases were identified based on cross-examination between CCA activities and stakeholders. Secondly, a list of needs for developing DTs to serve as CCA support was developed. Together, these aspects provide a solid base for more effective DT design in supporting the transition to a more resilient society.

The rapid development of new technologies such as electrification, autonomy, and other contextual factors pose significant challenges to development teams in balancing competing aspects while developing value-robust solutions. One approach for achieving value robustness is designing for changeability. This paper presents a tradespace exploration from a Systems-of-Systems perspective to facilitate changeability assessment during early design stages. The approach is further demonstrated on a fleet of haulers operating in a mining site. © 2024 Proceedings of the Design Society. All rights reserved.

Innovation plays a vital role in ensuring sustainable mining operations. Electrification and autonomy are two significant trends, but their implementation brings complexity at vehicle and site levels. Therefore, it is crucial to understand how these technologies impact the overall site value creation. This paper suggests a hybrid approach that combines Agent-Based Simulation and vehicle dynamics modeling to explore site configurations. By regarding a mining site as a System-of-Systems, designers can concurrently test different designs to find the optimal combination for a specific scenario.