• Product development

    We do product development research within the area of mechanical engineering, with a focus of supporting the development of sustainable products and services

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  • Model driven development

    We're working with a model driven approach where we model, simulate and visualize entire life-cycles already in the conceptual design phase.

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  • Value Driven Design

    A shift from delivering products to giving access to use-of-product (product-service systems) is putting higher focus on the value of a design. Read about how we transform the field of Value Driven Design,

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About Product Development Research Lab

The Product Development Research Laboratory is a research team at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Blekinge Institute of Technology.

The unit is highly specialized on in-depth knowledge on digital product development.

Our work is focused on developing the “engineers desktop" with methods and tools to support companies to deliver innovative product-service system concepts that support the transition to a future sustainability society.

Director of the PDRL is Professor Tobias Larsson.

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Research

The ability to effectively deliver new values to the market; innovation, is a challenge on global scale for companies today. 

The research at PDRL aims at targeting early development stages of product development by use of a model based engineering approach with simulation at the core.

The research is particularly oriented towards early development, and questions of how to best identify, communicate, utilize, and re-use knowledge about, for example, user needs and product usage, are of high interest together with aspects of team based innovation, value creation and engineering optimisation.

Creating the ability to run simulation driven design of new sustainable solutions by using a model based approach is a key in order to support global product development where sustainable lifecycle solutions; product-service systems is the goal.

The applied research efforts provide new work procedures, methods and tools as well as new insights that support and enable product development improvements for our partners, while the research at the same time is disseminated in the proper academic channels to ensure quality control.

Below are our main research areas within mechanical engineering.

MODEL DRIVEN DEVELOPMENT

"Digital product development"

Industry and society is becoming more and more model driven and data and models are being shared between different stakeholders to follow-up productivity, carbon footprint, cost etc. It is clearly time utilize live data in combination with extended modelling and simulation to as early as possible in the conceptual design make Digital Twins and make informed decisions.

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PRODUCT-SERVICE SYSTEMS

"Engineering life-cycle functional solutions"

Society is rapidly developing into a function based solution society for a circular economy reasoning. We do research that support this transition from pure hardware development into hybrid product/service/software development.

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INNOVATION ENGINEERING

"Engineering the capability to deliver innovation"

Methods and tools to inspire and deliver innovation is at the core of the innovation engineering research. Supporting innovation capability, including measuring of innovation, to be deployed in corporate context.

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141
JOURNAL ARTICLES
353
CONFERENCE PAPERS
7193
CITATION COUNTS

Latest Research Publications

Conceptual Design in Informal Metalworking Microenterprises of Tanzania

Conceptual Design in Informal Metalworking Microenterprises of Tanzania

Abstract Product design is a key aspect of human intelligence and creativity, attracting not onlyexperts but also people without any…

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A Study of the Boundary Conditions in the ISO-16630 Hole Expansion Test

A Study of the Boundary Conditions in the ISO-16630 Hole Expansion Test

Abstract As new and more advanced sheet metal materials are introduced to the market, more accurate techniques for determination of…

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Boosting Value Co-creation in Design Through the Product-Service System Digital Twin: Questions to Be Answered

Boosting Value Co-creation in Design Through the Product-Service System Digital Twin: Questions to Be Answered

Abstract Digital Twins (DTs) are among the most hyped technologies of the 2020 s. Yet, the research dealing with the…

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Constitutive modeling of commercial pure titanium sheet based on non-associated flow rule and differential hardening

Constitutive modeling of commercial pure titanium sheet based on non-associated flow rule and differential hardening

Abstract The commercial-pure titanium (CP-Ti) sheet has attracted a great interest from biomedical and aerospace industries because of its strong…

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Designing Value-Robust Product-Service Systems by Incorporating Changeability: A Reference Framework

Designing Value-Robust Product-Service Systems by Incorporating Changeability: A Reference Framework

Abstract When a Product-Service System (PSS) has a longer lifecycle, it is subjected to several internal and external changes along…

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Boosting Value Co-creation in the Road Construction Industry Through Virtual Prototyping

Boosting Value Co-creation in the Road Construction Industry Through Virtual Prototyping

Abstract When construction companies move forward in their servitization journey, there is an increasing need to exploit digital tools and…

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A Framework to Address Complexity and Changeability in the Design of Circular Product-Service Systems

A Framework to Address Complexity and Changeability in the Design of Circular Product-Service Systems

Abstract The design of a circular PSS solution goes beyond the traditional perspective of circular product design encompassing multiple complexity…

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Design with and by Marginalized People in Humanitarian Makerspaces

Design with and by Marginalized People in Humanitarian Makerspaces

Abstract There is a growing demand for humanitarian aid around the world as the number of displaced people has reached…

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Research Projects

Research Partners

Contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals

The Sustainable Development Goals are a call for action by all countries – poor, rich and middle-income – to promote prosperity while protecting the planet. We contribute to the below goals, where #9 and #12 are our high impact goals. Here is our breakdown of the PDRL contributions.