Welcome Christian Johansson, Assistant Professor
- Post by: Tobias Larsson
- 3rd November 2013
- No Comment
Dr Christian Johansson is an Assistant Professor working with a focus on knowledge engineering issues in the conceptual design stage of complex product development in close academia/industry collaboration, joining BTH as a part of the KKS research profile “Model Driven Development and Decision Support” as of November 3. With an international research background from EU FP6 and FP7 aerospace research projects and long experience in engineering education this is a very positive recruitment for BTH and the Product Development Research Lab.
Christian Johansson (left) with Marco Bertoni (right) at cook-off competition.
Who are you and what is your background?
My name is Christian and I come from Motala, although I just moved to BTH from Luleå University of Technology, where I spent the past 13 years, first obtaining an MSc degree in Mechanical Engineering and then a PhD degree in Functional Product Development. Since then I continued in Luleå working in the Product Innovation research group. A thread throughout has been an interest in product development and being able to support engineers and designers with various processes, methods and tools.
What do you do in research?
My research interest lies in the intersection of early stages of the product development process, engineering knowledge management and decision making. Basically I look into how different knowledge engineering methods and tools can support product development, and specifically how to support engineers and managers in making confident decisions in these early situations where the knowledge base might be a bit unknown.
I have experience from European FP6 and FP7 research projects in the aerospace domain, where these issues regarding knowledge sharing as well as collaboration have been hot topics. In these projects I have focused on knowledge enabled engineering, enterprise collaboration as well as rapid development processes for feasibility evaluation in these complex projects. Being at the intersection of these interesting topics with several partners from industry experiencing these problems everyday provides unique insights and experience.
In addition to this, I have taken part in numerous Swedish research projects with companies from different areas of the Swedish manufacturing industry, where focus has been on anything from development approaches for product-service systems to approaches for knowledge sharing.
What is your experience in teaching?
I have experience in teaching from many aspects relating to product development, such as product development processes design methodology courses, Computer Aided Design and I also have some experience in teaching project management courses. Of course I have also a burning interest in coaching and supervising both project teams and thesis students.
An important part for me is to complement the theoretical bits that are inevitable in each course with a practical perspective and also to ensure that we keep in mind the real-life engineering perspective at all times. At some stage the students are going to work in real teams and then they should be the best they can be in collaborating with their fellow engineers and designers.
In addition to this I always like to try out new approaches and continuously reinvent myself as a teacher (within some reason, of course), which normally means including new developments from research in some form.
What do you hope to bring to the BTH community and partners?
I come to BTH with high expectations for the future. For me, its a nice opportunity to reboot a little bit and explore some new paths while naturally making use of my strengths and experience.
What I can bring is, beyond my experience from research and teaching in Luleå, also a fresh perspective on things. As I highlighted earlier, I like to experiment a bit and hopefully something fun and good will come out of that.
For more information: Product Development Research Lab Director, Professor Tobias C. Larsson, tobias.larsson@bth.se, +46(0)455-385525.