The Transdisciplinary Engineering Index: Towards a Disciplinary Maturity Grid

Abstract

The adoption of transdisciplinary capabilities within UK manufacturing could strengthen resilience in response to system disruptions. We propose a Disciplinary Maturity Grid (DMG) as a means through which industry can assess the disciplinarity of their engineering capability. The design of methods to assess maturity of disciplinary working is hindered by a lack of empirical evidence to support identification of the important dimensions. A workshop involving twelve academic experts was used to create a maturity grid. Workshop tasks focussed on defining the appropriate number of maturity levels, the dimensions of those levels, and the maturity assessment questions. The DMG contains five maturity levels and seven dimensions, providing a preliminary design from which to build in future studies.