Ebook: Transdisciplinary Engineering for Complex Socio-technical Systems

This book of proceedings contains papers peer-reviewed and accepted for the 26th ISTE International Conference on Transdisciplinary Engineering, held at the University of Tokyo, Kashiwa Campus, July 30 – August 1, 2019, Japan. This is the eight issue of the newly introduced series “Advances in Transdisciplinary Engineering”, which publishes the proceedings of the TE (formerly: CE) conference series and accompanying events. The TE/CE conference series is organized annually by the International Society of Transdisciplinary Engineering, in short ISTE (www.intsoctransde.org), formerly called International Society of Productivity Enhancement (ISPE, Inc.) and constitutes an important forum for international scientific exchange on transdisciplinary engineering. These international conferences attract a significant number of researchers, industry experts and students, as well as government representatives, who are interested in the recent advances in transdisciplinary engineering research, advancements and applications.

Developed in the 80’s, the CE approach is based on the concept that different phases of a product life cycle should be conducted concurrently and initiated as early as possible within the Product Creation Process (PCP), including the implications of this approach within the extended enterprise and networks. The main goal of CE is to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the PCP and to reduce errors in the later phases, as well as to incorporate considerations for the full lifecycle, through-life operations, and environmental issues. In the past decades, CE has become the substantive basic methodology in many industries (e.g., automotive, aerospace, machinery, shipbuilding, consumer goods, process industry, environmental engineering) and is also adopted in the development of new services and service support.

The initial basic CE concepts have matured and have become the foundations of many new ideas, methodologies, initiatives, approaches and tools. Generally, the current CE focus concentrates on collaboration within and between enterprises and its many different elements. Current research on CE is driven again by many factors like increased customer demands, globalization, (international) collaboration and environmental strategies. The successful application of CE in the past opens also the perspective for future applications like overcoming natural catastrophes, sustainable mobility concepts with electrical vehicles, and intensive, integrated, data processing. Due to the increasing importance of transdisciplinarity, the board of ISPE, Inc., now ISTE, decided to rename the conference series in “Transdisciplinary Engineering” in 2016.

The concept of transdisciplinarity transcends inter- and multi-disciplinary ways of working. It is also aimed at aligning different types of knowledge. In particular, transdisciplinary processes are aimed at solving complex ill-defined problems or problems for which the solution is not obvious from the beginning. In addition, such problems, including their solutions, have a large impact on society and the context in which the problems exist. It is important that people from society and practice collaborate with people from scientific communities. Moreover, for the respective problems, single disciplines cannot bring sufficient knowledge for solving those problems. Collaboration between disciplines is needed. Disciplines should be open to other disciplines to be able to share and exchange the knowledge necessary for solving the problem. In particular, technical and social science disciplines need to collaborate to use the best of different worlds.

Any engineering problem can be put is a context in which the problem is to be solved or in which the solution for the problem is expected to be used. For researchers and engineers it is important to take into account this context. This could be done, for example, by collaborating with researchers who can study user acceptance of the envisioned solution or with researchers who can apply suitable methods to acquire user preferences in the respective context and translated them into the necessary requirements for the solution to be developed.

The conference is entitled: “Transdisciplinary Engineering for Complex Socio-technical Systems”. The TE2019 Organizing Committee has identified 23 thematic areas within TE and launched a Call For Papers accordingly. In total 86 papers have been submitted from all continents of the world. The submissions as well as invited talks have been collated into 10 themes led by outstanding researchers and practitioners.

The Proceedings contains 68 peer-reviewed papers presented at the conference by authors from 17 countries. These papers range from the theoretical, conceptual to strongly pragmatic addressing industrial best practice. The involvement of industry in many of the presented papers gives additional importance to this conference.

This book on “Transdisciplinary Engineering for Complex Socio-technical Systems” is directed at three constituencies: researchers, design practitioners, and educators. Researchers will benefit from the latest research results and knowledge of product creation processes and related methodologies. Engineering professionals and practitioners will learn from the current state of the art in transdisciplinary engineering practice, new approaches, methods, tools and their applications. The educators in the TE community gather the latest advances and methodologies for dissemination in engineering curricula, to prepare students for transdisciplinary collaboration in complex engineering processes, while the community also encourages young educators to bring new ideas into the field.

The proceedings are subdivided into several parts, reflecting the themes addressed in the conference programme:

Part 1 is entitled Advanced Robotics for Smart Manufacturing and contains papers on diverse subjects like energy source systems, TE projects, and distributed sensing systems.

Part 2 outlines the importance of Design of Personalized Products and Services. It contains papers addressing configuration projects, energy-efficient water dispensing systems, better customer-perceived value, and product configuration in Industry 4.0.

Part 3, Engineering Methods for Industry 4.0, contains subjects like student support for sustainable smart industry, knowledge-based engineering, design case study of a design with CPS, prediction of bulk freight based on movement data, exploration of bias-breaking in emission reduction, design platform for customized housing, and a workshop for supporting collaborative problem framing.

Part 4 contains papers in the theme Additive and Subtractive Manufacturing addressing e.g., challenges for additive manufacturing in HPDC tooling, aerospace component design and evaluation, and theory of constraints for corporate management.

Part 5 is entitled Decision Support Tools and Methods. It focuses on multi-criteria decision-making for energy renewal, visualization of shop floor and for pairwise comparison, deep learning image recognition for green behavior, trends in product platforms, personal mobility services, TE for smart product-service systems, technologies for offshore industries, design for user preferences, TE approach for decision-support tool performance, product development methodology, technology roadmaps, and simulation of project duration estimation.

Part 6 contains contributions on Complex Systems Engineering with various contributions like a design estimation model, lessons for machine learning, socio-technical systems, approaches to electricity load prediction, prospects of IoT, prototype for detection of landmines, ontology for IoT protocols, digital twin for sensor failure, technical risk management, methods for industrial object recognition, change propagation in project management, innovative suspension system design, enterprise approach to risk modeling, mathematical models for various applications, a platform-based OEM-supplier collaboration, and an air mobile stroke unit.

Part 7 is entitled Big Data Analytics in Manufacturing and Services. It illustrates some approaches to neural networks for trademark infringement detection, probabilistic project risk evaluation, decisions in complex urban infrastructure design, synonym detection in document mining, and fault detection and classification.

Part 8 deals with Concurrent Engineering. This part contains contributions on musculoskeletal motion analysis, ill-defined knowledge boundaries, materials for valve construction, knowledge objects for knowledge management and design automation, and knowledge support for the design-automation lifecycle.

Part 9 contains contributions on Cost Modeling, Analysis and Engineering addressing various methodologies for cost estimation in product development, recycling costs, optimization of labor control, and a survey on requirements management.

Part 10, Digital Manufacturing, Modeling and Simulation, contains papers on methods for complex social realities engineering, systems modeling evaluation, automatic digital twin generation, visualization of complex products and processes, augmented operator proposal, and system modeling for software development.

We acknowledge the high quality contributions of all authors to this book and the work of the members of the International Program Committee who assisted with the blind peer-review of the original papers submitted and presented at the conference. Readers are sincerely invited to consider all of the contributions made by this year’s participants through the presentation of TE2019 papers collated into this book of proceedings. We hope that they will be further inspired in their work for disseminating their ideas for new approaches for sustainable, integrated, product development in a multi-disciplinary environment within the ISTE community.

Kazuo Hiekata, Conference Chair

University of Tokyo, Japan

Bryan R. Moser, Conference Co-Chair

MIT, USA / University of Tokyo, Japan

Masato Inoue, Program Chair

Meiji University, Japan

Josip Stjepandić, Co-Program Chair

PROSTEP AG, Germany

Nel Wognum, Co-Program Chair

TU Delft, The Netherlands

The article presents the conceptual design of Hybrid Energy Source System (HESS) for Long Endurance Electric UAV. During the design, the MBD method was used to analyze energy consumption during various UAV operational states as well as the entire mission for different HESS concepts. Such analysis at an early stage of the concept allows you to choose the optimal HESS set for a given UAV and expected mission parameters. The design method is based on a simulation computer model of subsystems and flight phenomena affecting the energy consumption during the flight. The modular construction of the simulation model allows the use of various details of simulation models for different stages of project development. The use of the HESS solution as well as the method of its design makes it possible to overcome the basic inconvenience of using electric drives in all types of vehicles, ie reconciling sufficient temporary operational parameters of the drive and long-term operation. In addition to the description of the method itself and the details of the simulation model, the article also presents a case study for the popular UAV class.

Transdisciplinary engineering (TE) is gaining attention in academic literature and comes with the underlying assumption of being the next evolutionary step for incorporating engineering solutions in practice. We seek to answer the question of when TE is appropriate and what the conditions are for efficient applications of TE in practice. A framework for analysis is constructed integrating TE with theory of communication and strategic paradox. The framework is used as a lens in a single explorative case of an multi-university research project. The project brings together researchers from a diverse range of disciplines, working together to create a novel device that could have a transformative impact on specific cancer healthcare. Data is collected using structured interviews with project researchers. The main finding from the case study is that TE does not appear to be employed at all levels of abstraction. In this case TE is found to be employed at the strategic level, while tactical and operational levels adopt traditional approaches to working. Effective TE relies heavily on the relationship between specialisation and generalisation. We identify two main roles when it comes to people; specialists and generalists. Specialists (e.g. healthcare, pharmaceuticals & biotechnology) must be able to understand the general picture while the Generalists (e.g. business; operations) must be aware of the requirements and limitations of Specialists. Generalisations for practice and further research are discussed. The main contribution of the work is a framework for analysis of TE.

The main goal of our research is to develop an integrated photonics circuit for sensing system based on Optical Frequency Domain Reflectometry in order to reduce size, weight and cost of current system. In this work we designed, simulated and fabricated Michelson interferometer integrating components such as adiabatic splitter, loop back mirrors, grating couplers and waveguides on total area 150x410 μm of silicon-on-insulator chip. According to simulation results free spectral range of the interferometer is 0.55 nm. Manufacturing variability was taken into account by performing corner analysis.

Configurators are expert systems that support product customization by defining how predefined entities and their properties can be combined. Configurators support decision-making processes in the sales and engineering phases of a product and bring substantial benefits, such as shorter lead times, fewer errors, increased ability to meet customers’ requirements and more. Developers of configuration systems act as designers, albeit often not recognizing they are performing in a design process. They define the project scope and the distinction between the problem and solution space elucidates the dualistic approach of Design Thinking (DT). DT is a human-centered approach that includes a wide perspective of stakeholders and aims at enhancing human experience and solving complicated problems by exploring both the problem and solution space. However, exploration of the solution space is typically not a big part of configuration projects, where instead the focus is on mapping the existing knowledge to the configurator. Thus, this paper investigates if the use of DT can make the configuration engineers more inclined to develop new and improved product solutions before implementing knowledge into the configurator. Firstly, the paper reviews the DT literature and discusses its potential applications in configuration projects. Secondly, the paper studies three configuration projects in which DT has been applied. Next, the case studies are compared to existing configuration projects described in the literature. The results of analysis showed that the application of DT promoted increased exploration of the solution space and better communication within organization, and that this led to improved product solutions.

Energy efficiency and conservation have become a concern as many issues raised up regarding the increase in energy usage. Besides lighting and HVAC, a conventional drinking water dispenser also consumes plenty of huge electric energy in a building. However, most of them are wasted in vain as the machine will constantly repeat boiling and cooling the water even though no one uses the machine. In addition, the water that comes to the machine needs to boiled first to ensure it is safe to consume, then the water will be chilled and moves to warm-water tank and cold-water tank. Also, the machine needs to have sterilization which will heat all the water. Overall, the energy management in conventional drinking water dispenser is indigent. In this study, the design of intelligent energy-efficient drinking water dispensing system will be elaborated, including the architecture, key features, and analysis. Utilized by the Internet of Things and Cyber-Physical Systems, Intelligent Water Dispenser is able to maintain the energy efficiency.

Value is in the eyes of customers, and business success relies on how customers perceive the value of what a company offers to them. Therefore, seeing value through the eyes of customers and properly design of customer experience journey have become important and grabbed the attention of practitioners and scholars in recent years. Failing to understand customer perception can cause damage and puts the company at risk of retaining a competitive advantage. However, current research has not yet provided a holistic and systematic structure in which experience clues and customer perceived channels are incorporated. Therefore, presented in this paper is a framework, based on the customer experience journey, to underline the role and the connection of experience clues and customer perceived channels on the customer experience journey. The proposed framework is illustrated through a real case study on broadband service for onboarding new customers. The framework is expected to provide practical value to a company and experience designers on improving their offerings to be more effective in order to achieve better customer perceived value.

Based on Cyber physical system (CPS) and the Internet of things (IoT), the smart production system is capable to suit diverse customers’ manufacturing requirements. It has the potential to provide digital configure-to-order (CTO) services in a quick response time. To achieve this potential, a new conceptualization of quick-response product configuration system, which translates the voice of customers to technical specifications, is proposed. It is expected that the proposed system can enhance the communication between the customers and the manufacturers. We adopt the Kano model to receive the voice of customers as inputs and generate a product configuration as outputs which can meet customer’s requirements. A case study and a product configure system for ordering assistance are demonstrated in this work.

The way business run has changed in recent decades due to technology advancement, and it has become more explicit in many parts of the world that companies have been moving from stand-alone technology exploitation towards holistically integrated technology exploitation. Thailand’s government has also foreseen the need for change from a production-based economy to a value-based economy and has encouraged the Thai industry to focus more on producing innovative products and services which require high potential and skilled knowledge workers. Consequently, their roles will never be the same. This paper presents findings on the expected roles of graduates with a Master degree in Industrial Engineering (MSIE) drawn from an industry survey on industry needs to attain Industry 4.0 conducted with companies based in Thailand and in three European countries participating in Erasmus+ Capacity Building in Higher Education project on Curriculum Development of Master’s Degree Program in Industrial Engineering for Thailand Sustainable Smart Industry (MSIE 4.0). From the survey results, top-three technologies for being competitive and areas of applications to attain industry 4.0 in the companies’ perspective were identified. Roles of MSIE graduates were determined for individual potential applications generated from identified technology-application relationships. According to the findings, the graduates are expected in general to play an important role in effective utilization of big data and real-time data for better decision making on various industrial practical problems as well as for better responsiveness to customers. The same procedure can be applied in other disciplines for identifying the roles of their graduates.

The work presents real, industrial examples of generating, developing and applying UML templates in knowledge modelling for the needs of KBE applications. The applied templates are a synthetic reflection of standard programming constructions used by teams of programmers in specific industrial conditions. Templates are created taking into account both the very individualized specifics of software development, as well as the individualized process of evolution of a specific project area. In this case the construction of the KBE application is implemented as modelling based on carefully elaborated and largely individually tuned templates. The final application of this class is integrated with commercial CAD / CAE systems and other software. The use of the templates allows for a relatively effective, specialized creation of KBE applications. In addition to the skills needed to work with templates, people using this tool must possess clearly articulated, competent and complete substantive knowledge. The article consists of three sections: the first introduces themes to the templates and presents the process of initialization of this tool class in industrial conditions; the second section shows the use of modelling in the process with the gradual evolution of the modelled knowledge; the third section concerns the application of a strategy based on the rational development of a representative set of templates. The examples presented are based on real industrial implementations conducted over a period of about 10 years.

The work concerns the concept of assisting software supporting the design process of a selected class of the CPS (Cyber-Physical System) – a tractor drive system. The task was carried out in a process-oriented convention. The paper presents the characteristics of individual stages of the design task – the design of the tractor transmission electronic unit treated as a design case. To the classic substantive-model-staged narration, the characteristics of existing, acquired, developed and used personal knowledge of designers have been added. Attention was paid to the process, product models, requirements and constraints, aspects of analysis and synthesis, automation tools, and wider contexts of particular issues. The material collected in terms of the personal knowledge served to create the concept of an assistive system for designers to improve the design process through more precise and problem-dedicated knowledge and design models management. The proposed concept is based on design knowledge modelling and can be applied in the design process of the CPS or its elements.

The Baltic Dry Index (BDI) is an indicator of freight rates of dry bulk cargo. Since freight rate fluctuates widely with reflecting a rapid change in the shipping market, it is important for a shipping company to predict the BDI. In the shipping industry, detailed data on the movement of each vessel is currently available in the automated identification system (AIS) on board, and a wide use of the AIS data is increasingly expected. This study proposes a new prediction method for freight index using deep learning and AIS data. The prediction target is the Baltic Capesize Index (BCI) representing the freight rate index of a large dry-bulk carrier over 180,000 DWT. The AIS data and various statistics are incorporated into the model to predict the rise or fall of the BCI value after 30 days. A multiple set of AIS data of the entire world and several specific regions are used. Furthermore, the number of related statistics to be incorporated is increased and a method of selecting them by introducing maximal information coefficient is shown. From the simulation results, the prediction of BCI can be performed with a certain degree of accuracy. In addition, the effect of introducing AIS data in the BCI prediction is confirmed.

This papers presents a quasi-experiment on the characteristics of innovation teams during the early stages of a project, with an emphasis on number and categries of ideas generate with quality throgh a bias-breaking ideation exercise. This quasi-experiment raised several interesing questions on the combination of individual and collective ideation and its relationshop to more innovative outcomes (e.g., quantity of ideas, originality, transformation potential) than solely individual or group thought. Is there an optimal combination of individual and group work that fosters better outcomes? Further, the timing, quantity and quality of communication between team members is also expected to influence the outcomes of ideation processes, and constitutes another focus of this research. What are the characteristics of communication conducive to innovation?

Industrialized house-building (IHB) is a sector offering unique products by adopting an engineer-to-order (ETO) strategy. Customer satisfaction is achieved by adaptation of product solutions and the fast-paced introduction of new technology in combination with short lead-times and cost-efficient production. Product platforms is acknowledged as a strategic enabler for mass customization and increased competitiveness. The strategy has been a necessity in the mechanical industry for several decades. However, for IHB, platforms have only gained interest in recent years. In general, ETO companies struggle with adopting the common product platform approach, set by pre-defined modules and components. Predefinitions require standardization of the product offer which reduces the customization ability which is regarded as a competitive edge. The Design Platform (DP) approach was developed aimed to support ETO companies by utilizing different types of engineering assets in a coherent transdisciplinary model enabling efficient customization. The long-term aim of this work is to investigate and support the DP applicability in IHB to increase efficiency in development and delivery. For this article, data were gathered from a single case study, including workshops with company representatives combined with interviews and document analysis. Based on the data analysis, engineering assets were identified and characterized. Further, a conceptual PLM solution is proposed and outlined to support the DP application combined with the assets. The results suggest that a PLM system can host parts of the DP and that it is applicable in IHB.

The objective of this paper is to develop a collaborative workshop environment for decision-making to improve collaboration in a cross-cultural team. Final goal of this research is to improve collaboration in a cross-cultural team, and this paper approaches a problem of communication and group performance among the team members during problem framing stage. To achieve the goal, we utilized systems approach and workshop monitoring system. Systems approach is utilized to fill the gap between the cross-cultural team members and to improve the communication efficiency. To make it applicable to non-experts of system modeling, an information system to support the modeling tasks is developed. The workshop monitoring system accumulates log data related to the collaboration, and provides feedback about the teamwork during the workshop. In a case study, as a part of demonstration of the proposed workshop environment, an experiment to show the usefulness of the monitoring and automatic visualization system is conducted.

When manufacturing tooling inserts for HPDC (High Pressure Die Casting), several manufacturing steps such as milling, heat treatment, electro discharge machining and finally surface treatment are involved. By instead manufacturing the insert by SLM (Selective laser melting), the process is expected to be quicker and with less material waste compared to the traditional manufacturing. Examples of other expected advantages is higher product variant flexibility and the possibility of making conform cooling channels, extending the die life. However, the insert is part of a die system involving many components. The insert cannot be designed and manufactured without considering the complete die system. This paper seeks how to integrate the insert design in the die assembly design. This is done via an example component and in cooperation with die manufacturing firms. The result is that the printing is a minor step of the total manufacturing process and that special design considerations needs to be taken for an SLM insert. New die concepts are needed that will minimise the amount of material, reduce the tolerance and surface demand and support the subdivision of the die into several printed parts.

Abstract Currently, the additive manufacturing process SLM (selective laser melting) is of high interest in the aerospace industry for the manufacture of jet engine components. This is driven by several factors such as reducing weight and minimizing the variation in the manufacturing process. In the paper, the state of practice in designing SLM parts is examined showing that there is plenty of opportunity to adapt designs to the process. However, this is often too time consuming in the early stages. By examining the state of art in SLM part design, the paper and identifies the variant specific cost drives that are proposed to be used to rank the manufacturability of different design alternatives for turbine frame aerospace components.

According with the exponential growth of Information Technology and current volatility world, the company has to drive uncertainty much rather than before. This is the time that keeping still shall result in termination of company. Therefore it is important to clarify the priority evaluation measure for continuing company operation, which we will define the vital power scale in this paper. Focusing working capital (Cash enable company to do legal payment to any stakeholders), which is essential to maintain company operation, evaluation measure for vital power of company (major measurable factor to evaluate working capital or practical measurable index for corporate management, corporate management is to enable to keep company alive) has been studied with TOC (Theory of constraints). Investigation has been done by using dice simulation having assumption of linkage and fluctuation in system, which is introduced by TOC, under the variable market price and varying company productivity.

Due to lack of indigenous conventional energy resources, renewable energy has become a potential alternative for Taiwan’s future energy supply. Numerous studies have recently emerged on renewable issues in Taiwan. However, studies that specifically consider effects of various influential parameters on evaluation and selection of renewable energy sources based on multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) approach under neutrosophic environment are still limited to some specific part of the renewable energy sources (RES). MCDM methods has become increasingly popular in solving the decision-making problems which involve multiple criteria. This study proposes an extension of MCDM approach to evaluate renewable energy sources, using the combination of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique with the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method based on interval – valued neutrosophic sets.

This paper aims at conceptualising a digitised Shop Floor Management (SFM) visualisation board. The logic of inquiry throughout the study is an iterative back and-forth approach between our theoretical conceptualisation of the digitised visualisation board and empirical data collected in three industrial companies. The paper shows that digitised visualisation boards should have malleable representation capacities to transfer, translate and transform knowledge within and across SFM teams. A digitised visualisation board is suggested, which consists of; translating practices within SFM teams, translating practices across SFM teams, transforming practices across SFM teams and translating practices within SFM teams.