Designing the Future: Resilient Trans-Disciplinary Design Engineers

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.

The beneficiaries from this research include the researchers themselves, design companies (SMEs to large scale businesses), Manufacturing Companies, Manufacturing Process Developers and Society (direct and indirect benefits).

People benefits
The researchers on the project will benefit through skills development. Our aim is to develop the engineers and academics of the future. The ability to work with e.g. research experts from different fields, analyse historical data and engage with experts from different disciplines will provide the researchers with skills that can be applied in any area of engineering. This will enable the UK to benefit in the short-term through training engineers. The platform also enable us to be flexible in the way staff are employed. As we know 50% of our workforce are women and often in traditional grants it is difficult to fund part-time working. In our platform we have two women who wish to work part-time, this flexibility provides benefit for the individual as well as society - offering us access to skills we sometimes lose as we are not flexible in offering sustained appointments.

Industry & Societal Benefits
The initial direct beneficiaries include our researchers and our initial project partners (CubikInnovation, Renishaw, Moog and Airbus). However, we have commenced wider engagement with industry at our workshop on 6th June 2017. Once we have created the dynamic models, years 3-5 of the platform will be aimed at widening the industry partners. The benefits they will realise through the creation of 'live evolving integrated design and manufacturing tools' will include

- quicker uptake of new manufacturing processes through the development of trans-disciplinary design engineers
- realisation of whole life value benefits through innovative progressive manufacturing processes reaching their full potential.
- creation of a standard for assessing a Designers Readiness Level for Future Manufacturing. As with Technology and Data Readiness Levels, we the standard can be used for industry to assess their capability to utilise new manufacturing knowledge. This will enable industry to target their efforts where greatest benefit will be realised.

Engaging Future Engineers
The topic integrating Design and Manufacturing utilising data analytics and novel manufacturing processes already gives us an opportunity to engage schoolchildren early in their development. We will actively undertake school engagements each year ensuring the image of manufacturing is one that is an exciting domain to enter. We will focus our activities at primary (key stage 2) children. Although this is a long-term impact, it is important for UK PLC to have design and manufacturing seen in a positive manner by children. We will use the new manufacturing processes and digital models to engage children with manufacturing from the outset.