scope:

Objectives and target groups

Initial situation

Industrial firms are faced with a significant change in their constraints. This affects in particular development and design, which plays a leading role in the success of a product but at the same time has been almost overwhelmed in recent years with additional tasks and requirements. Globalization, outsourcing strategies, cost, quality and environmental management and partly drastic reduction in the lifetime of products influence embodiment design in particular, which accounts for the greatest proportion of design work by far but which has until now lent itself least of all to academic treatment.