The work of the Department of Manufacturing Engineering at the Technical University of Denmark has for a number of years been concentrating on advancing hypotheses for the development of specification systems. The hypotheses have been tested through Ph.D. projects and master thesis works. The focus of attention in the Centre for Industrialisation of Engineering is all the relevant business aspects of the implementation of changes in a company’s specification system.
The research is thus based on actions and on the systematic gathering of experience regarding the implementation of specification systems, based on the research results achieved throughout the last ten years.
Relations have been established to research groups in other countries. What is characteristic of these groups is that they work within limited fields of interest such as e.g. computer science/modelling technology, product development/ product modelling, organisation/management.
A fundamental assumption for the research work carried out hitherto at the Department of Manufacturing Engineering is that a combination of these fields, together with an operational/a business approach to the subject, is necessary for the development of coherent and overall procedures that are directly applicable to Danish companies.
This inter-disciplinary combination is, as far as we have learned, unique, and we have not been able to identify a similar approach to the subject within the international research groups we know.
The research will include a continuous knowledge building from relevant international research groups within the fields of modelling techniques, architectures, procedures and the future organisation of engineering. In continuation of this, the existing hypotheses for the development of specification systems will be further elaborated.
The centre will carry out a considerable empirical work within the participating industrial companies where the research task is to test the hypotheses advanced by assisting in the implementing of the new specification systems. The research program will include a systematic gathering of experience and, in continuation of this, a correction of the hypotheses advanced.