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This paper discusses the design of multi‐usage systems able to perform various missions inside buildings, including inspection, digitization, monitoring of construction work, and evaluation of technical performances of the building. Designing such systems, carrying out various missions in different operational environments, is a complex task and requires adopting a well‐defined engineering approach. A model‐based systems engineering (MBSE) approach is proposed and applied to address the complexity of the indoor multi‐usages system and to lead its development. The proposed method provides several complementary and comprehensive views of the system.

Until recently, research into the sustainable design of interactive systems has primarily focused on the direct material impact of a system, through improving its energy efficiency and optimizing its lifecycle. Yet the way a system is designed and marketed often has wider repercussions, such as rebound effects, and systemic change in practices. These effects are harder to assess (and to anticipate) than the direct physical impact of the construction and use of the system itself. Current tools are unable to account for the complexity of these effects: the underlying causal mechanisms, their multi‐level nature, their different temporalities, and the variety of their consequences (environmental and societal). This is why we are seeking to develop a specific methodology and tool, inspired by systemic design and system dynamics. These are intended for decision‐makers and designers of interactive systems within systems of systems (for example, in the fields of agricultural robotics or public transportation). In this paper, we present this modeling approach and our prototype tool through the example of a second‐hand clothing sales platform.

AbstractIn order to lead successful projects, coordinating the different business units of a company is compulsory. This paper proposes a framework to make companies’ practices evolve toward a better alignment of the business units based on their processes, and illustrates it with project management and systems engineering processes. Indeed, all the different organization units intend to serve the common global objective to satisfy the customer needs, and need to closely collaborate during projects. However, work organization in companies often leads to barriers between these stakeholders, with the result of an incoherent decision-making that may compromise project execution. Therefore, the issue of processes alignment from different domains lies at the very heart of ongoing research topics and ranks first among economic and industrial concerns. This paper uses a qualitative approach to show how different business units’ processes can be integrated and illustrate this framework by aligning the systems engineering and project management processes within a certain engineering project context. By using the proposed framework, different teams (or even different companies, in a context of distributed enterprise) can align their practices, while also making them evolve toward a better compliance with standards.

The paper presents a four-layer framework for the application of data-driven design in a product innovation process. The framework builds on the Knowledge Value Stream and on the Product Value Streams of a product innovation process and indicates how data-driven activities shall be structured and organised in relation to the different phases of a model-based decision process. Visualisation is proposed as a communication enabler at the top of the framework to overcome the comprehensibility barrier between data science and engineering design models. The framework is implemented in the case study of a construction equipment encompassing the analysis of operational machine data and the experimentation of suitable visualisation techniques. Ultimately, a list of challenges for the implementation of data-driven design is presented, and the capability of the framework to support the transition toward data-driven design is discussed in relation to the emergence of product-service systems solutions.