Lithium-ion batteries are one of the most promising technologies in energy storage due to their high energy density and long service life. Despite this, this technology can present failures that reduce its useful life. For this reason, battery management projects are constantly developed in the industry, aiming to optimize and reduce battery degradation, mainly for applications in second-life cells. In this context, this work aimed to create a project with a transdisciplinary team for an intelligent lithium-ion battery manager for applications in energy storage solutions by combining the Design Science Research (DSR) methodology and framework Scrum. The DSR methodology was applied to monitor the creation of the intelligent manager. Conversely, Scrum was used for project management and control through weekly monitoring meetings and creating Sprints. Despite problems observed during the project, such as developer turnover, the project management was successful. It resulted in the presentation of the developed artefact at a conference and the publication of an article in an international journal. The combinations of both methodologies resulted in success and can be applied to other future product development projects and even for startups.

The demand of current markets for innovative products with the latest technologies and meeting environmental and sustainable requirements has increased the demand in the product engineering areas within organizations. Furthermore, regardless of the growing complexity involved in the new product development process, delivery/launch times have been increasingly tight. In this context, it is identified that these market/society demands have affected the current development patterns, leading to situations such as input data inaccuracy, incompatibilities between project requirements and engineers' knowledge, interface errors or output data inconsistency. These and other harmful consequences lead to increased costs, delays in the product development process, and deterioration in the quality of delivered products. Therefore, this research proposes an approach to determine similarity and critical path of functions that help to reduce the time and information inconsistency during the conceptual phase of the complex product development process. The research universe was explored through the technical procedures of literature review and experimental cases. Such a method called SuC (Step up Concept) determines the functional groupings and their synthesis complexities. With this, it is possible to identify the critical path that will lead to mitigation actions by the Engineering teams. The proposed method was tested using an experimental case applied to different types of real products, confirming its potential for the development of complex products, as it offers new perspectives in aspects of conceptualization and synthesis in the development of different complex products.

The Royal Academy of Engineering held a series of seminars on the Philosophy of Engineering in 2007, to which this author contributed a paper entitled “Philosophical Issues in the Practice of Engineering Design”. This considered this essential feature of engineering, which is to apply scientific methods to produce products created to meet human needs by ensuring their realisation obey relevant theories to achieve practical ends. This is done by a design practice which has not received the same level of philosophical enquiry that has been addressed to the pure or “natural” sciences or even engineering analysis and the research associated with that practice. While the 2007 paper is reviewed in the light of almost two decades of further research into the most demanding of engineering design practice – that of physically large and complex systems (exemplified by certain marine vessels, large civil engineering constructions and major chemical plant) – it has been observed that the practice of such design has itself grown in complexity. From considerations of design philosophy, including quite contrary visions, design at this demanding level encompasses the creation of not just technological products but also organisations, processes, environments and even ways of thinking. Thus, the practice of engineering design is very much a human endeavour that is largely conducted by teams of engineers, often of different sub-disciplines interacting with non-engineering stakeholders. With the onset of AI and Machine Learning how this Computer Aided Design practice is likely to change is seen as a philosophical and sociological question.

In this paper, a work procedure developed to support the collaboration and progress in the research project IDEAL – Integrated product and production platforms supporting agile and demand-driven industrial product realisation – is presented and its functionality discussed. The research project involved in total 14 researchers, five manufacturing companies and one software supplier. The research project was organised in four sub-projects, covering various aspects of a joint research question. The project started in April 2020 and ended in January 2024. The work procedure, called the ´IDEAL work procedure´, was developed based on the overall principles from interactive research combined with the framework for design research methodology (DRM). The developed work procedure provided a structure for the project, connecting the four subprojects, and thereby supported fulfilment of the joint research question. During the research project, the functionality of the ´IDEAL work procedure´ has been assessed in different ways, both in terms of how it was perceived and to what extent the planned results have been achieved. During the project we have carried out workshops to follow-up on the progress and the work procedure. In addition, follow-up interviews have been conducted with participants from involved companies. The results from the different assessment activities are synthesised and presented in this paper. To expand the applicability of the ´IDEAL work procedure´, the potential of the procedure to support transdisciplinary research is elaborated on in this paper.