Product Development Research Lab – Department of Mechanical Engineering, Blekinge Institute of Technology
  • Product development

    We do product and production development research within the area of mechanical engineering, with a focus of supporting the development of sustainable products and services

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  • Model driven development

    We're working with a model driven approach where we model, simulate and visualize entire life-cycles already in the conceptual design phase.

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  • Value Driven Design

    A shift from delivering products to giving access to use-of-product (product-service systems) is putting higher focus on the value of a design. Read about how we transform the field of Value Driven Design,

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About Product Development Research Lab

The Product Development Research Laboratory is a research team at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Blekinge Institute of Technology.

The unit is highly specialized on in-depth knowledge on digital product/production development.

Our work is focused on developing the “engineers desktop" with methods and tools to support companies to deliver innovative product-service system concepts that support the transition to a future sustainable society.

Director of the PDRL is Professor Tobias Larsson.

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Research

The ability to effectively deliver new values to the market; innovation, is a challenge on global scale for companies today. 

The research at PDRL aims at targeting early development stages of product (and production) development by use of a model based engineering approach with simulation at the core.

The research is particularly oriented towards early development, and questions of how to best identify, communicate, utilize, and re-use knowledge about, for example, user needs and product usage, are of high interest together with aspects of team based innovation, value creation and engineering optimisation.

Creating the ability to run simulation driven design of new sustainable solutions by using a model based approach is a key in order to support global product development where sustainable lifecycle solutions; product-service systems is the goal.

The applied research efforts provide new work procedures, methods and tools as well as new insights that support and enable product development improvements for our partners, while the research at the same time is disseminated in the proper academic channels to ensure quality control.

Below are our main research areas within mechanical engineering.

MODEL DRIVEN DEVELOPMENT

"Digital product/production development"

Industry and society is becoming more and more model driven and data and models are being shared between different stakeholders to follow-up productivity, carbon footprint, cost etc. It is clearly time utilize live data in combination with extended modelling and simulation to as early as possible in the conceptual design make Digital Twins and make informed decisions.

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PRODUCT-SERVICE SYSTEMS

"Engineering life-cycle functional solutions"

Society is rapidly developing into a function based solution society for a circular economy reasoning. We do research that support this transition from pure hardware development into hybrid product/service/software development.

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INNOVATION ENGINEERING

"Engineering the capability to deliver innovation"

Methods and tools to inspire and deliver innovation is at the core of the innovation engineering research. Supporting innovation capability, including measuring of innovation, to be deployed in corporate context.

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Latest Research Publications

Future Innovation Framework (FIF) for Value Co-creation of Smart Product-Service System Design in a Global Automotive Manufacturing Company

Future Innovation Framework (FIF) for Value Co-creation of Smart Product-Service System Design in a Global Automotive Manufacturing Company

Abstract The Product-Service Systems (PSS) methodology faces new challenges as digital servitisation drives product-oriented companies to integrate digital services into…

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AI-Driven Predictive Maintenance for Autonomous Vehicles for Product-Service System Development

AI-Driven Predictive Maintenance for Autonomous Vehicles for Product-Service System Development

Abstract The paper presents an Artificial Intelligence-driven approach to predictive maintenance for Product-Service System (PSS) development. This study focuses on…

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Extended realities and discrete events simulations: A systematic review to define design trade-offs and directions

Extended realities and discrete events simulations: A systematic review to define design trade-offs and directions

Abstract Extended Reality (XR) technologies are increasingly popular to support the engagement of different audiences and stakeholders with Discrete Event…

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Utilizing Natural Language Processing for Enhancing Collaborative Value-Driven Design of Smart Product Service System: Smart E-Vehicle Application

Utilizing Natural Language Processing for Enhancing Collaborative Value-Driven Design of Smart Product Service System: Smart E-Vehicle Application

Abstract Manufacturing companies are increasingly transitioning from a product-centric to a smart Product Service System (smart PSS) approach to enhance…

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Exploration of the Digital Twin for Prototyping the Product-Service System Design in a Bus Manufacturing Company

Exploration of the Digital Twin for Prototyping the Product-Service System Design in a Bus Manufacturing Company

Abstract When bus manufacturing companies move forward in their servitization journey for providing service solutions for tourism industry, there is…

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Surface-conformed approach for mechanical property analysis using ultrasonic welding of dissimilar metals

Surface-conformed approach for mechanical property analysis using ultrasonic welding of dissimilar metals

Abstract In this paper, dissimilar aluminum (Al) and copper (Cu) metals were joined together using ultrasonic metal welding (USMW), a…

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Investigation of Temperature Impact on Friction Conditions in Running Production of Automotive Body Components

Investigation of Temperature Impact on Friction Conditions in Running Production of Automotive Body Components

Abstract During the running production of automotive body components drifts in theprocess window is seen causing problems with non-conforming parts.…

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LightFlow: Lightweight unsupervised defect detection based on 2D Flow

LightFlow: Lightweight unsupervised defect detection based on 2D Flow

Abstract In the industrial production process, unsupervised visual inspection methods have obvious advantages over supervised visual inspection methods due to…

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All publications here

Research Projects

Research Partners

Contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals

The Sustainable Development Goals are a call for action by all countries – poor, rich and middle-income – to promote prosperity while protecting the planet. We contribute to the below goals, where #9 and #12 are our high impact goals. Here is our breakdown of the PDRL contributions.