Abstract This paper deals with the story and experiences of setting up a new start-up company with the ambition to scale using a software-based product. The paper is written by researchers for researchers interested in doing the same thing. The paper concludes that it can be very beneficial for research as the startup-can be seen as a data collection machine, but to set up a start-up company, comes with unforeseen problems along the way. A few of them involves: Do not rely on rational arguments (only), when marketing your product. Expect long lead-times. Work with multiple threads and secure funding early to ensure that you can finance your startup. Finally, you need to be committed, and you have to have a strategy to manage both your research and your commercial activities.

In this study, we have brought several knowledge management theories and practices together and have investigated the valuable aspects in each one of them. Throughout our research, we have enabled knowledge reuse to be a guiding principle and have attempted to formulate an improved method for documenting knowledge. The focus has been to create actionable and reusable knowledge presented at the right time, to the right audience in a digitally condensed format that may hopefully will lead to improved decision-making, thereby potentially driving innovation and effectively reducing overall product realization lead-time. We have explored the effect of the Engineering Checksheet concept in two separate case studies where it was implemented in a real-life setting. The concept showed positive results as a knowledge carrier both for reuse by experienced and novice users.

This paper presents an educational game fostering a new experience-based approach to teaching knowledge transfer using a codification strategy alone. The goal is to address and highlight some common issues and challenges that occur during knowledge transfer in product development and that are often difficult for especially students to grasp through exclusively a theoretical teaching approach. The game is introduced to 60 students in the final year of their Master's curriculum. In parallel, the game has been applied in a similar setting in a comparable higher educational institution, as well as in a product development organization.“Sometimes you win—other times you lose and learn.”

In multi-domain product development organizations, there is a continuous need to transfer captured knowledge between engineers to enable better design decisions in the future. The objective of this paper is to evaluate how engineering knowledge can be captured, disseminated and (re)used by applying a knowledge reuse tool entitled Engineering Checksheet (ECS). The tool was introduced in 2012 and this evaluation has been performed over the 2017–2018 period. This case study focused on codified knowledge in incremental product development with a high reuse potential both in and over time. The evaluation draws conclusions from the perspectives of the knowledge workers (the engineers), knowledge owners and knowledge managers. The study concludes that the ECS has been found to be valuable in enabling a timely understanding of technological concepts related to low level engineering tasks in the product development process. Hence, this enables knowledge flow and, in particular, reuse among inexperienced engineers, as well as providing quick and accurate quality control for experienced engineers. The findings regarding knowledge ownership and management relate to the need for clearly defining a knowledge owner structure in which communities of practice take responsibility for empowering engineers to use ECS and as knowledge evolves managing updates to the ECS.

Manufactures, developing products, need to adapt and improve their practices taking advantage of technology advancements and simultaneously develop products and solutions to fit a new world. This paper discusses how societal and technological trends drive the need for change and evolution in what is called Systems Engineering Design (SED), indicating a systems view on engineering design. Through an analysis and selected examples it is argued that SED capabilities need to better address the width and complexity of design problem, takes advantages of increased computational power and sensing technologies to master future challenges. An important factor for successful deployment and change in industrial context, is the need for interactive and visual aids and easily accessible support methods. This can pave the way also for advanced SED support

Visual Planning has shown strong benefits for its easy-to-use layout and ability to plan projects with little effort and a low threshold to the method. However, limitations of the physical solution becomes apparent as more development are conducted in distributed teams where information becomes difficult to share and interact with. This paper presents challenges extracted from a literature review, combined with interviews and observations in nine case companies and concludes that there is a great importance, that despite digitalization, maintain a strong emphasis on preserving the meeting.

Globalization is constantly increasing; companies are opening offices in different countries and having international partners. The ability of managing global projects is becoming an indispensable part of the companies’ competency portfolio in order to survive in the fierce competition. This research aims to provide an efficient and lean methodology for companies that want to be efficient at managing global projects. This paper contributes to the project management literature by expanding the knowledge on pulse methodology with a new methodology called digital pulse methodology, which helps companies to manage their global projects. Pulse methodology is a well-known and widely used methodology in Sweden for managing deviations in product development. Companies appreciate its simplicity and its lean tools. However, previous studies show that it is not efficient in global projects and there are a number of requirements it must fulfill in order to do so. We developed digital pulse methodology as an expansion on baseline pulse methodology aiming to improve the appreciated methodology towards making it fulfill the given requirements, thus help companies to manage deviations in global projects. We tested the new methodology by making the case company use it over a three months period. We gathered the results of the requirement tests along with the other benefits of the methodology using observations and interviews.

This paper presents the results of an empirical study of a project whose aim was to develop a driveline for commercial vehicle applications containing a totally new mechatronic sub-system with a significant amount of new functions and interfaces. The purpose of the empirical study was to identify areas where explicit knowledge management efforts are needed in the development process of a mechatronic systems integrator. The results show that the management of knowledge related to component/system interfaces is not addressed neither in the state of practice nor the state of the art. Based on these findings, the method of engineering checklists to manage interface-related knowledge was found suitable. Methods on how to implement engineering checklists however are largely lacking and the main contribution of this paper is a method dedicated to creating engineering checklists from a knowledge management perspective. The evaluation of the developed method indicates a high level of both usefulness and usability of the method in the processes of the studied company along with potential improvement mainly regarding the instructions for the application of the method.