The Future of Transdisciplinary Design ─ Proceedings of the Workshop on he Future of Transdisciplinary Design? University of Luxembourg 2013

This book presents the state-of-the-art research in the field of transdisciplinary design, and highlights the challenges and issues from the perspectives of processes, people and products in transdisciplinary product design and development. It collates research papers resulting from the ‘Workshop on the Future of Transdisciplinary Design’ written by leading researchers in engineering design and product development. The papers provide examples and case studies from existing practices, as well as future perspectives towards the development of the complex and ever-changing domains of engineering design and product development, with an emphasis on transdisciplinarity.

‘The Future of Transdisciplinary Design’ contains a selection of research papers in the following areas related to transdisciplinary design:

-Approaches

-Tools and methods

-Management and collaboration

-Distributed and culturally diverse teams

-Modeling, representing and managing information

-Education and training

A transdisciplinary design process is a design process involving the integrated use of knowledge, methods and tools from various disciplines. Design of product/services increasingly requires cross-disciplinary collaboration, and integration of specialized knowledge from different disciplines is necessary to tackle complex and large scale design problems. This book provides a valuable reference to researchers, professionals and PhD students in the field of engineering design and product development. Design practitioners and those involved in product development in the manufacturing industry will equally benefit from the research presented as well as future advances in this research.

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Lucienne Blessing
Lucienne Blessing studied Industrial Design Engineering in Delft, the Netherlands, where she obtained her MSc in 1984. Until 1992 she worked at the University of Twente (NL) in the department of Mechanical Engineering as a lecturer. Here she obtained her PhD in the area of Knowledge Management in Design. The following 8 years she worked at the Engineering Department of the University of Cambridge (UK), initially as senior research associate and from 1995 as Assistant Director of the Engineering Design Centre. In 2000 she was appointed to the Chair of Engineering Design and Methodology at the University of Technology Berlin. In 2007 she left Berlin to become vice-president for research at the University of Luxembourg, where she also has a chair in Engineering Design and Methodology.
Her research interests include: the product development process, diversity (culture, age and gender), user-technology interaction, design methodology and design research methodology.
She has been lecturing since 1985 covering the following topics: introduction to process control, technical drawing and projection theory, design research methods, machine elements, systematic product development. Furthermore, 21 researchers successfully defended their PhD under her supervision and 5 under her co-supervision; currently she is supervising 5 doctoral candidates.
Since 1999 Lucienne Blessing is co-organiser of the International Summer School on Engineering Design Research, a 2-week course for PhD students. In 2000, she co-founded the Design Society, was elected member of its Management Board from 2000-2005, and has since been an elected member on its Advisory Board. She was co-editor of the journal Research in Engineering Design (Springer Verlag) from 1994-2009. Together with Ken Wallace (UK), she translated the German standard book on Engineering Design from Professors Pahl and Beitz into English. She has written a book on Design Research Methodology together with Prof. Amaresh Chakrabarti, and is (co)author of over 160 peer-reviewed publications. She has been in the organization and programme committees of various conferences, and is reviewer of journal articles, conference papers, as well as research projects

Dr. A.J. Qureshi
Dr. A.J. Qureshi studied Mechanical Engineering at the University of Engineering and Technology (UET Lahore) Lahore in Pakistan where he Obtained his B.Sc. Mechanical Engineering in 2002. Afterwards he worked for following 4 years in the petrochemical and oil and gas industry in the field of turbomachinery reliability. In 2007 he obtained a Master degree in “Design, Industrialisation and Innovation” from Arts et Metiers ParisTech, Metz France in with specialisation in Tolerance optimisation in detailed design. Here he also obtained his PhD in 2011 in the area of robust design in mechanical product design while working as a lecturer in the department of “Applied mathematics, informatics and design”. Since 2011he is working as a research associate at the University of Luxembourg in the Engineering Design and Methodology Group with Prof.Dr.-Ing Lucienne Blessing. He is also teaches engineering design at Arts et Metiers ParisTech Paris, France.
His research interests include: the product development process, design automation, simulation based design, knowledge management in integrated design, tolerance allocation and analysis in mechanical product design, robust design. He is currently undertaken research project is entitled “Transdisciplinary Analysis of Design Methodologies and Approaches” which proposes:
1. to obtain a better understanding of communalities and differences of the design methodologies and the methods developed and used in different domains, as well as of the reasons for acceptance or rejection (much of the developed support is not used);
2. to use this understanding to develop a transdisciplinary approach to support practitioners and students in mechanical engineering who are confronted with an expanding problem space, which is not covered by the available methodologies and methods.

The planned deliverables of the project are: a comparative description of existing design methodologies and methods (with a focus on the early phases of the design process) in different domains; an analysis of their acceptance and application; and the outline of a transdisciplinary approach to support practice and education.
Dr.-Ing. Kilian Gericke
Kilian Gericke studied Mechanical Engineering in Berlin, Germany. After receiving his diploma in 2005 he worked at the Technische Universitat Berlin until 2010 as Research Associate and obtained his PhD for his research on Project Risk Management in product development projects in 2011. Since 2010 he works as postdoctoral researcher at the University of Luxembourg in the engineering design and methodology group.
Kilian Gericke is lecturing courses on Machine Elements, Systematic Product Development, and Sustainable Development and supervising student design projects.
His main research interests are systematic product development and design management. In his work he analyses potentials and ways of exchanging and adapting methods and systematic design approaches across different design disciplines. He is continuously publishing research papers and is reviewer of journal articles, conference papers, and research projects