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Engineering Design Science

Conference Paper · November 2005

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Wolfgang Ernst Eder

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wi{f*i:i:-

W. Ernst Eder

DOCTOR HONORIS CAUSA

Plzei, listopad 2005

F,ngineering Design Science 2005-t 0-1 l
W Ernst Ecier
Address to the Cont,ocation at the Llniversitt of West Bohemia. 9'h November 2005

Your Magnificence Rector of the Universit-v* of West Bohemia in Pilsen, Honorable

Deans of the Faculties of this Umversity, Members of the Scientific Board, Members of the
Academic Staff of this University, Deputies of other Universities from the Czech Republic,
Honorable Attendees
Academic tradition at this University asks that I should present a short address on this
ceremonial occasion. It gives me great pleasure to use this tradition.
I intend to outline the investigations in which I have been inrrolved for the past 43 years,
and their background. Whether this should be called academic and scientific research rs a
question I u,ish to avoid, it depends on your impression of u'hat should class as research.
Ple'ase excuse me for my iack of knowledge of the Czechlanguage, with your permission
I rlill use my second language, English.

Huma.n society, its policies and operation, its economics, and its culture, have alu'ays
been mutually influenced by the current state of technological achievement. The invention, and
subsequent development to usable artifacts, of the u'heel, of gunpowder, ofvarious kinds of
machinery including the modern digital computer, and all the devices that u'e now take for
granted. have allowed human society to develop, and in the process to create more new devices.
Many of these devices are intended for use by members of the general public, others only for
specialists. Many devices are highly technical in their operation and use, and in their
manufacture, and we wiil call these 'technical s.vstems'.
Before the Industrial Revoiution, ali technological derrices, technical systems, were
produced in small quantities by local craftsmen, using long experience and smali changes to
evolve better devices for the local conditions, as a need arose. Knolr,ledge (and human-
internalized knowing) was passed on from one generation to the nert by forms of apprenticeship.
The Industrial Revolution brought a division of labor between 'thintriers' and 'doers'. It
caused a drastic change in the way that new and revised devices have been thought out and
produced. One set ofpersons now searches for needs and plan products, another thinks them out,
another prepares for production, another produces, yet another distributes, and again another uses
and disposes of these devices. This resulted in a consequent emphasis on economic production of
quantity goods and services, often anticipating needs and producing for later sale. Product
planning and production can now take place any'where in the world, and deliver to an1'where -
globalization is a reality.
This 'thinking out' before a device can be produced, and the use of the natural sciences to
predict the behavior of these future technical derrices, is known under the name of designing A
further differentiation has also taken place into design engineering and artistic design, usually
knou'n as 'industrial design' for products. It is only in the last 50 years that the processes of
design enaineering have been inlestigated

Turning now to a personal note il this context, I was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1930.
During the Second Worid War, Februry 1939 to October 7946,I u'as resident in England, whilst
my parents remained in Vienna. On returning to lienna n 1946, and har-ing to re-learn my
native German, I attended the 'Technologisches Ger.r'erbemuseum'.
 -{fier compJering this education. I was emp1o1'ed for ten years as eneineerine desiener.
for sk years in Austria, anC a funher four tears in Engla,nd. The products ranged from rrackeci
vehicles for alpine {brestry, r'ia electrical por",er transformers, to steel strip processing by acid
pickling and melt tinning
On m,v appointment at the University College of Swansea (South Wales), my first duties
were to attempt to teach design engineering in the Department of Mechanical Engineering In
1965 my first co-authored book u'as published, Eder and Gosling 'Mechanical Systems Design'
(Pergamon Press). At a recent conference in Canada, an attendee told me that he used this book
many years later for teaching design engineering Things alu,a1.s return to haunt you like an
irntating inelody.
In Januar)' 1968 I rvas appointed 'Associate Professor' at the LTniversity of Calgary',
Canada. In 1981 I joined the Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston, Ontario. as 'Associate
Professor' and rvas promoted to 'Professor' in 1987.
The imponanl poinl of this personal sketch is that n 1967, a1 a conference in llmenau,
then in the German Democratic Republic, I first met Vladimir Hubka. He gradually became one
of the most significant exponents of Engineering Design Science in the worid. In 1980,
Professor \4adimir Hubka, then active at the Techlical University, Zirtch, Switzerland. asked
me to cooperate by translating, for publication in English, his small but fundamental book '\4DK
I - Allgemeines Vorgehensmodell des Konstruierens' (Fachpresse Goidach 1980)
Subsequentll', he coopted me to help in developing the insights from his previous pubiications,
which resulted in several books under the co-authorship of Hubka and Eder. I o\ve an lmmense
debt of gratitude to Professor Hubka for his sponsorslup and scientific leadership. Our
cooperation has continued almost to the present, with mutual benefit. He introduced me to your
country and city, and in the process also to your own academic stafrmember, Professor Stanislav
Hosnedl, whom I met in 1988, and u4th u,hom I have had the pleasure of cooperating since the
early 1990's. We are currently collaborating on yet another book, u'hich we hope will soon be
published.

Returning to my main topic, design engineering, a brief sun ey should reveal some of the
contexl. In the era knolln as B.C. - 'Before Computers' - u,hilst I q,as employed in industry,
new or revised engineering products, technical systems, were generated in drawing offices by a
process known as design engineering.
Generating concepts for products apparently involr,ed creativity, but was a largely
unexplored procedure, and therefore unteachable Engineers could only obtarn this experience by
a long period of understudy, usually quoted as about ten years to become competent as leading
engineering designers
Engineers laid the technical system out in sketches, and in correctly scaled eneineering
la-vout drawings. A group of techrrologists then produced detail drawings for each separate part
that u,ould need to be made.
With the development of digital computers of ever-increasing power, the engineering
design procedure was changed.
I need to point out that engineers must have a large resource of internalized knowledge
and available factual, cultural and scientific information so that they can perform their duties
efrectively and create safe and useful technical systems for the benefit of society. Design
engineering is not just 'an an' performed b5' 'talented' people. engineering designers have
iearned bv teachinq and exnerience
 I u'ish to point out the difference of this procedure compared to the more afiistic
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interaction are priman'. and concepts are developed in a studio settine by anistic creativit_v and
judgement. These concepts are rendered into artistic impressions and physical models of the
proposed product for approval by top-level management Legal responsibility is usual11' not a big
concern.

This address is titled 'Engineering Design Science' According to the conventional \'ieu's,
a science is a collected and codrfied body of knou'ledge about a phenomenon, based on
erperirnental and obsen'ational research The word 'science' is commonly appiied in engineering
to such topics as thermodl'namics, stress analysis. kinematics and d;'namics - all the subjects
with which we torture our students
Information that has been collected by experience has also been codified to ertract a
more generalized knowledge, some of u'hich rvas recorded in the literature and could be passed
on in a more formalized learning situation, in schools and Universities. Many sciences have been
established to try to model and define the repeatable phenomena which we can recognize.
Science attempts to formulate a repeatable and logical expression that describes the
phenomenon. The formulations of these scientific generalizatrons in words and mathematical
symbolisms are usefu1 in themselves, as recorded knowledge They are furthermore useful if they
can be adapted to predict the behavior of the phenomena, and of devices that employ these
phenomena.
Usually a science treats an isolated phenomenon, with little regard for any relationships
to other phenomena, and it is often expressed in non-mathematical form Research also takes
place in the humanities, for instance psychology, sociology, and many others, but the resulting
knowledge is usually not calied a'science'. This development of bodies of knowledge is largely
academic, the knou,ledge is codified for the purpose of codifiing and coilecting, with little
regard for any possible use. The trigger for this process of codifying often comes from pure
personai curiosity, but sometimes from a recognized deficiency, especially for the applied
sciences.
Nevertheless, as Klaus formulated in c;,bernetics, 'both theory and method emerge from
the phenomenon of the subject'. In other words, if we can define the boundaries of a subject, and
generate a theory about that subject, we can also speciS, a method. The theory can range from
very formalized and codified - a science - to a vague idea in the mrnd. The method can then
specifi' how to use the subject, or how to anticipate it, to design it.
Also according to conventional views as outlined earlier, design engineering seems to be
a purely personal matter, involving creativity and other mystic quaiities. How then can \ /e expect
to ialk about an Engineering Design Science?
The earliest attempts to codifi design engineering occurred in the late 1940's and 1950's,
usually in a short cbaracterization of a few elementary statements that garre a view of some
important aspects. Important names spring to mind, but they are too many to list here. In
England, the trend u'as towards improving the appearance of technical systems, and u,'as called
'industrial design', Germany in 1965 recognized an'Engpass KonstruLlion' (bottleneck design
engineering) as a lack in suitable training, and in numbers of suitably trained engineers - leadrng
to the founding of several Chairs of Design Engineering at Technical Universities. The first
holders of these chairs (and others at non-German institutions) each attempted to define a
generalized eneineering design methodology, based on their o\\,n praqmatic experience. One aim
 \ /as to use abstractions to explore the engineering
desrgn space. and thereby to consider more
alteinative candidate solutions, especially at the absiract leveis.
It was in this atmosphere, and under severe political pressure, that in the early 1960,s
\'rladimir Hubka and a feu' colleagues started to tlunk in more scientrfic and theory-based
terms
about design engineering. in order to help the practice of design engineering. They recognized
that design engineering had various components, namely (r) the te&nical system as the main
part of the product to be designed, its r.arious kinds of properlies, its immediate development,
and its development over time. (2) the process of design engineering, from requirements
to final
detail and assembly drau'ings, (3) the humans who perform the tasks of designing, (4)
their toois
and technical equipment (increasingly including computers), (5) an immediat-e e#ronment
in
which they performed their u,ork, (6) an information base on u'hich they could draw, and (7)
a
management system that regulated their activities as engineering designers, and
the range of
products that they are asked to design. Any codification of information about design
engineering
is thus expected to be a multi-facetted compilation of these seven elements and
the-ir
relationships This will necessarily include information from and relationships to orher
branches
of conventional investigation, including human psychology, sociolog,v, management sciences,
and many others.
\4adimir Hubka continued this work until very recently. His initial aim was to formulate
a comprehensit e theory of technical systems that is as general as possible, and takes into account
the relationships among sciences and other information, first publish ed rn I9j4.In
1976 he
published a theory of design processes that coordinated well with the theory of technical
systems In the late 1980's he (with the help of others, including myseifl expanded this
aim
tolr''ards combining these theories into an original and comprehensive system of
knowledge about
design engineering, Engineering Design Science In other words, the phenomenon
of design
engineering should be described in as comprehensive, complete and general a way
as possrble,
taking all of the complex factors into account, and coordinating u'ith the existing knov.ledge
of
pragmatic engineering design methodologies.
Based on this theory, we could then recommend a complete theory-based model
of a
procedure for design engineering Remember my first cooperation u,ith Vladimir
Hubka,
translating his small book '\4iDK 1 - Allgemeines \/orgehensmodell des Konstruierens,
(Fachpresse Goldach 1980) for publication in English? That was the first draft.
We have srnce
then refined, redefined and expanded this procedural model as our understanding
ofEngineering
Design Science has grown. This knowledge has been published and translated inilmost
rhrrty
books and countiess papers injournals and at conferences, and are currently cited and
appliei
'world-wide'. We have, of course, been helped by critical questions
and opinionr, by
your coileague, Professor Stanislav Hosnedl And this cooperation is continuing, ".p""iully
joint publications, and others are planned.
*"iu.r" ,o-"
Having now mentioned '\\DK' twice, I think that it would be useful to mention
that in
i980 Professor \ladimir Hubka, Professor Umberto Pighrni and Dr lr4ogens My.up
A11dreasen
founded the informal world-u,id e orgarizatton \\DK Workshop Design-Konsiruktiol
- to
collect, develop and spread Engineering Design Science knowledge by
-utrly starting the
currentlv unique series of ICED Conferences, with associated Workshops aliover
thJworld, and
bi' publishing the Proceedings and other books under the VIDK imprint, mostly by
Heu'sta,
Zinch The 'Trade Marks' of ICED and WDK have now been transferred to ih" n"rrgo
Society, a n'or1d-r"'ide community, and have recently been used in runring the
15tr ICED 2005 in
Melbourne. .\ustralia
 Jt is important for me to slress m)' co-operarion u'jthjn tbe frameu'ork of WDK u irh y'our
country, and especiaily wrth your University I refer especialiy to Courses for Practicing
Engineering Designers and University Teachers held in Praha and Plzen at the begrnning of
nineties These helped after the 'r,elvet revolution' in 1989 to break tbrough the barriers for
information and knowledge exsting betu'een'east' and 'west'. The co-operation continued r','ith
ICED 95 Praha, and especiaily the series of six international \\iDK Workshops held in Plzen
under my tech:ricaVscientific chairmanship, u'ith the local organization in the capable hands of
Professor Hosnedl and the staffof his Deparlment of N4achine Design. These Workshops
significantiy helped to establish links u'ith foreign Universities and broadcast the name of the
University of West Bohemia. Among other achievements, i should quote the book \\DK 24 -
Proceedings of the Workshop EDC - Engineering Design and Creatiliq' 11995) u'hich I edited.
This book u'as distributed to all participants of ICED 97 in Tampere, and fi"rrther broadcast the
name of the University of West Bohemia in the u'orld.

Naturally, I cannot achieve much alone. My neu4y acquired second u'ife of almost four
years standing, Evall'n, deserves honorable mention for actively encouraging my continuing
efforts.
I also u4sh to express my sincere gratitude to members of this L'lniversity, particularll, to
the Rector Professor Dr Josef PruSa, (as well as previous Rectors Professors Jiii Holenda and
Zdenek VostracLry), the Vice-Rectors and the University Scientific Board (or Acadentic Council)
Thanks are also due to the Dean of the Facuity of X{echanical Engineering, Professor Dr. Jan
Horejc, the lice-Deans and the Faculty Scientific Board. Your decision to award me this
honorary doctorate is of great importance to me, especially to confirm that my n'ork and the
fruitful cooperation between your Department of Machine Design, Professor Vladimir Hubka, and
myself is acknou'ledged.
Honorable attendees, many thanks for your kind attention, and for coming to share this
ceremonial and iolfrrl event with me.

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