Designing the Future: Resilient Trans-Disciplinary Design Engineers

人们很容易认识到，在早期设计阶段做出的决定会影响产品的成本、性能、效用和对环境的影响。然而，我们知道，新技术的进步，如添加剂制造，导致了压缩的设计和制造周期。智能材料和自动化影响了制造系统，以及对利用物联网的数据驱动的制造价值链的需求，而工业4.0改变了商业模式，从而改变了整个制造环境。基本上，为了满足未来的制造需求，我们的设计和制造工具需要超越学科和工业部门。但是，作为研究人员，我们倾向于关注多学科工程(来自不同学科的专家相互借鉴知识)或跨学科(专业知识、工具和方法集成在一起，以解决单一挑战)。我们认为，我们需要创造新的知识，超越单一的调查/纪律主题，并为未来的工程师提供使用的方法。我们的愿景是通过‘跨学科设计-工程师’的管道和不断发展的工具来创建这一能力，以使增强的和新的制造工艺部门能够快速采用。为了实现我们的愿景，我们平台提案的核心集中在我们早期职业研究人员的保留和发展上。为了维持和扩大我们的人才渠道，我们正在提供职业管理和有针对性的员工发展。这将使我们的研究人员跨入他们的下一个职业生涯，成为跨学科的设计工程师，他们拥有实现当前和未来制造工艺和技术的潜力的技能。基础研究将为这些跨学科的设计工程师提供一套不断发展的模型。这些模型将是动态的、数据驱动的，并将通过提供在设计早期阶段了解新的制造工艺、成本、经济和整个生命周期决策的手段，使设计师能够跨学科。从根本上改变了21世纪产品的设计方式。

It is readily acknowledged that decisions made in the early design stages influence the product cost, performance, utility and impact on the environment. However, we know that advances in new technologies such as Additive Manufacturing result in compressed design and manufacturing cycles. Smart materials and automation influence the manufacturing system and the need for a data-driven manufacturing value-chain utilising the Internet of Things and Industry 4.0 changes the business models and consequently the entire manufacturing environment. Basically, to meet future manufacturing needs our design and manufacturing tools need to transcend disciplines and industrial sectors.However, as researchers we tend to focus on on multi-disciplinary engineering (where experts from various disciplines draw on each other knowledge) or inter-disciplinary (where expert knowledge, tools and methods are integrated together to solve a single challenge). It is our view that we need to create new knowledge beyond the single subject of investigation/discipline and provide methods for engineers of the future to use. Our vision is to create this capability with a pipe-line of 'Trans-Disciplinary Design-Engineers' and evolving tools to enable rapid uptake across sectors of enhanced and new manufacturing processes.To achieve our vision, the heart of our Platform proposal is focussed on the retention and development of our Early Career Research staff. To sustain and expand our talent pipeline, we are providing career management and targeted staff development. This will enable our research staff to leap forward into their next career step and become Trans-Disciplinary Design-Engineers, who have the skills to realise the potential of current and future manufacturing processes and techniques.The under-pinning research will provide these trans-disciplinary design engineers with a suite of evolving models. The models will be dynamic, data driven and will allow designers to be trans-disciplinary through providing the means to understand new manufacturing process, costs, economics and complete through life decisions at the early stages of a design. Fundamentally changing how 21st century products are designed.