With the rapid success of the digital enterprises in the 21st Century, industrial manufacturing is expected to be approaching the fourth industrial revolution, coined Industry 4.0 (I4.0). The instrumental technology that will drive this evolution is the integration of the physical and digital factory into one cyber physical system. There is consensus among academics and industry alike that there will be an integral paradigm shift in how offerings will be developed and manufactured. While there is much confidence that the future factory will have unprecedented capabilities to satisfy complex customer demands, there is little agreement on how individual organisations can utilise these trends. This paper presents a literature review identifying reoccurring themes and trends of I4.0 and their expected effect on future manufacturing. Central characteristics, challenges and opportunities are identified and discussed. The findings can provide support in developing actionable strategies for industry to direct I4.0 endeavours.

Function modelling is proposed in the literature from different disciplines, in interdisciplinary approaches, and used in practice with the intention of facilitating system conceptualisation. However, function models across disciplines are largely diverse addressing different function modelling perspectives and using different structures and forms for representing the contained information. This hampers the exchange of information between the models and poses particular challenges to joint modelling and shared comprehension between designers from different disciplines. This article proposes an integrated function modelling framework, which specifically aims at relating between the different function modelling perspectives prominently addressed in different disciplines. It uses interlinked matrices based on the concept of DSM and MDM in order to facilitate cross-disciplinary modelling and analysis of the functionality of a system. The article further presents the application of the framework based on a product example. Finally, an empirical study in industry is presented. Therein, feedback on the potential of the proposed framework to support interdisciplinary design practice as well as on areas of further improvement has been obtained from participants working in industry.

Supporting designers is one of the main motivations for design research. However, there is an ongoing debate about the ability of design research to transfer its results, which are often provided in form of design methods, into practice. This article takes the position that the transfer of design methods alone is not an appropriate indicator for assessing the impact of design research by discussing alternative pathways for impacting design practice. Impact is created by different means – first of all through the students that are trained based on the research results including design methods and tools and by the systematic way of thinking they acquired that comes along with being involved with research in this area. Despite having a considerable impact on practice, this article takes the position that the transfer of methods can be improved by moving from cultivating method menageries to facilitating the evolution of method ecosystems. It explains what is understood by a method ecosystem and discusses implications for developing future design methods and for improving existing methods. This paper takes the position that efforts on improving and maturing existing design methods should be raised to satisfy the needs of designers and to truly support them.

Authors across disciplines propose functional modeling as part of systematic design approaches, in order to support and guide designers during conceptual design. The presented research aims at contributing to a better understanding of the diverse functional modeling approaches proposed across disciplines. The article presents a literature review of 41 modeling approaches from a variety of disciplines. The analysis focuses on what is addressed by functional modeling at which point in the proposed conceptual design process (i.e., in which sequence). The gained insights lead to the identification of specific needs and opportunities, which could support the development of an integrated functional modeling approach. The findings suggest that there is no such shared sequence for functional modeling across disciplines. However, a shared functional modeling perspective has been identified across all reviewed disciplines, which could serve as a common basis for the development of an integrated functional modeling approach.

Method development is at the heart of design research as methods are a formalised way to express knowledge about how aspects of design could or should be done. However, assuring that methods are in fact used in industry has remained a challenge. Industry will only use methods that they can understand and that they feel will give them benefit reliably. To understand the challenges involved in adopting a method, the method needs to be seen in context: it does not exist in isolation but forms a part of an ecosystem of methods for tackling related design problems. A method depends on the knowledge and skills of the practitioners using it: while a description of a method is an artefact that is a formalisation of engineering knowledge, a method in use constitutes a socio-technical system depending on the interaction of human participants with each other as well as with the description of the method, representations of design information and, often, tools for carrying out the method’s tasks. This paper argues that crucial factors in the adoption of methods include how well they are described and how convincingly they are evaluated. The description of a method should cover itscore idea, therepresentationsin which design information is described, theprocedureto be followed, itsintended use, and thetoolsit uses. The account of a method’s intended use should cover itspurpose, the situations or product types within itsscope, itscoverageof kinds of problems within its scope, itsexpected benefitandconditionsfor its use. The different elements need to be evaluated separately as well as the method as an integrated whole. While verification and validation are important for some elements of methods, it is rarely possible to prove the validity of a method. Rather the developers of methods need to gather sufficient evidence that a method will work within a clearly articulated scope. Most design methods do not have binary success criteria, and their usefulness in practice depends as much on simplicity and usability as on the outcomes they produce. Evaluation should focus on how well they work, and how they can be customised and improved.

This work seeks to understand how design practitioners discover, select, and adapt design methods and methodologies. Design methods and methodologies are mainly used for educational purposes and are not formally transferred into design practice and industry. This prevents design practitioners from accessing the rich body of research and knowledge posed by academia. Various web platforms and textbooks allow users to discover or search for design methods, but little support is provided to assess whether or not a method is appropriate for the context or the task at hand. In this exploratory study, interviews were conducted with practicing engineers and designers. Interview responses were coded and analyzed in an effort to understand the patterns in searching, selecting, assessing, and exchanging experiences with peers in professional practice. This analysis showed that interviewees would like to search for design methods based on their desired outcomes. Additionally, interviewees considered their personal contacts to be the most valuable source of new methods. These insights show that web-based communities of practice may be a potential link between academia and industry, but existing web repositories and communities require further development in order to better meet the needs of the design practitioner community.