ie - Product Development Research Lab

Material selection: A qualitative case study of five design consultancies

6th October 2017
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ABSTRACT This qualitative case study aims at understanding when and how industrial designers, working in design consultancies, engage in activities that will influence material selection in the design process. While the extant literature presents material selection processes as a sequence of activities aimed at finding candidate materials, there is paucity of research on material criteria […]

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Tillverkning och övervakning på distans i Makerspace

4th October 2017
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I Makerspace, vårt lab för idégenerering och prototyputveckling, har vi bland annat ett antal 3d-skrivare. Även om tekniken utvecklas snabbt är det tyvärr inte ovanligt att utskrifter, i synnerhet större och mer komplexa geometrier, misslyckas. I ett försök att öka nyttjandegrad och tillförlitlighet har vi kopplat upp några av våra skrivare på nätet, IoT in […]

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The Future of Construction

2nd October 2017
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On Saturday September 30 a diverse team of 27 students from many of BTH’s master programs took on the challenge of innovating the Future of the Construction industry together with Volvo CE’s emerging technologies.

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Nonlinear Quality Function Deployment: an experimental analysis

2nd October 2017
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ABSTRACT Quality Function Deployment (QFD) is a common model to frontload engineering design activities with, linking the characteristics of a product vs. the voice of the customer using linear relationships. This approximation is often claimed to be misleading when dealing with the design of complex engineering systems. The paper presents the results of experimental activities […]

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Value-driven engineering design: lessons learned from the road construction equipment industry

2nd September 2017
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ABSTRACT Value models, in form of economical optimization functions, are often proposed to frontload engineering design activities. However, literature argues that, when qualitative data and assumptions prevail, a qualitative assessment of the ‘goodness’ of a design is preferable against a numerical (and monetary-based) encoding of preferences. This paper explores how a model-based approach can support […]

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Design For Resource-Limited Societies: Informational Behaviour Of Designers

30th August 2017
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ABSTRACT There is a sharp contrast between High Resource Settings (HRSs), commonly seen in developed countries and Low Resource Settings (LRSs), typically found in the marginalised sections of societies around the world. Product design for LRSs is crucial to satisfy unmet or under-served needs of the people living in LRSs. Supporting designers to develop successful […]

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The emergence process of innovation teams

29th August 2017
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ABSTRACT This research aims to gain knowledge regarding the group development process of newly formed innovation teams. In this comparative research, five multi-functional innovation teams based on voluntary members have been studied in an industrial context, all intending to conduct innovation projects after being educated in innovation management. In total 36 respondents have been studied. […]

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The Volvo CE Trace delivered at Stanford EXPE 2017!

29th June 2017
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As the summer approaches the yearly ME310 project with Stanford University draws to a close. This years’ projects were presented at the d.school on the Stanford campus in the heart of Silicon Valley in California.

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Innovation Enablers and Their Importance for Innovation Teams

12th October 2016
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ABSTRACT The aim of this research is to develop an understanding of factors that enable innovation teams to conduct agile innovation work in an industrial context. The background and reason for this research are not only that innovation is necessary for companies that want to stay in business, but also that these companies need to […]

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The Adoption of Additive Manufacturing Technology in Sweden

31st August 2016
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ABSTRACT This paper analyzes the adoption of Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies in Sweden. The dataset consists of a recent and representative sample of Swedish AM users (companies, universities, and research institutes). The authors investigate two questions. Firstly, what are the current applications of AM in Sweden (e.g. Rapid Prototyping (RP), production)? Secondly, what are the […]

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