Introduction to Design Engineering: Systematic Creativity and Management

Designing of engineering products - technical systems and/or transformationi process - needs a wide range of information, knowing, experience, judgement, and engineering analysis, to find an optimal solution, While inspiration cannot be measured or quantified, creativity and open mindedness can be assisted by systematic design engineering, with improved outcomes, documentation, and management.

Introduction to Design Engineering: Systematic and Methodical Approach to Engineering Creativity details a general model of engineering design procedure based on a theoretical framework that can be adapted to any design project.

The book presents methods for systematic and methodical conceptualizing with abstract models of engineering systems, to use when needed in developing candidtate solutions. The recommended enginneering dessign process is able to support all levels of creative design engineering, based on Engineering Design Science, which also helps to explain the role of engineering in society. Incorporating several new insights drawn from the latest research, the authors survey information about systematic, methodical and intuitive design engineering, thinking and reasoning, and progressive development of products. The general process should also be attractive to top-level managers and chief engineering designers.

Written by experts with 35 years of experience between them, the book defines a coherent body of knowledge about design engineering which contains a Theory of Technical Systems and a coordinated Theory of Design Processes. These theories show how the engineering sciences are connected and the wide range of information from other areas required for engineering activities. Based on this, the book provides a rationalized methodology for design engineering of novel and/or re-designed technical processes and technical systems.

W. Ernst Eder was born in Austria (1930) and educated in England and Austria. He graduated from an Advanced Technical College (TGM – Technologisches Gewerbe-Museum, Vienna) in 1951, and was awarded the state-registered title of ‘Ingenieur’ in 1957. Ten years of industrial experience in both countries consisted of employment in design offices of industrial organizations making alpine forestry equipment, power transformers and switchgear, and steel processing plant.
His first academic appointment at the University College of Swansea in 1961 started his involvement in teaching design engineering. In 1968 he was admitted to the degree of MSc in Engineering from the University of Wales. Further appointments took him to The University of Calgary (1968–77), Loughborough University of Technology (1977–81) and the Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston, Ontario (1981–2000). Even though he retired from full-time employment in 2000, he was still involved in design teaching at RMC until 2007.
Ernst Eder attained an international reputation in systematic and methodical design engineering. He published more than 150 papers on design methodology and engineering education, and co-authored or edited 13 technical books on design engineering and the design process. He was a founder member of the Design Research Society (UK) in 1966, and The Design Society in 2000. In 2005 he was named Professor Emeritus from RMC, and in 2006 was admitted to the degree of Doctor honoris causa at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, Czech Republic.

Stanislav Hosnedl, was born in 1942 in Czechoslovakia and graduated (Ing.) in Design Engineering at the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, Czech Republic, in 1964 in Machine Tool Design. He was employed in the engineering design and research departments in SKODA Concern Enterprises in Pilsen until 1990. He received his first doctorate (CSc.) at the University of West Bohemia in 1984, thesis ‘Complex Function Analysis of Driving Mechanisms of Machine Tools using Computers’. Since 1990 he has been lecturer in the Department of Machine Design, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of West Bohemia in Pilsen. From 1990 until 2000 he was a Head of the Department with a staff of 30. From 2001 to 2006 he was Vice Dean of the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering.
Dr. Hosnedl is author or co-author of 4 books, has 2 patents on inventions, more than 110 papers including more than 40 in foreign publications, more than 100 research reports, and main author of a large software package used in industrial practice and education since 1980.