Transdisciplinarity within the academic engineering literature

This paper presents our findings from thirteen industrial interviews, to investigate the significance of transdisciplinarity (TD) in an industrial context. Thus to gain insight into the resilience of industrial manufacturing in rapidly changing environments and establish what enabling or disabling practices may currently exist. The interviews were conducted as an initial part of a wider case study approach being undertaken by the TREND research team and were semi-structured in format. We present the background and research questions being addressed and outline our exploratory research approach. The analysis of interview transcriptions is provided answering our research questions and identifying any emerging themes. Of the industry interviews, only five interviewees had heard of the term TD, the definition of TD varied between companies and did not align with the primordial system of Jantsch’s work. A number of focal enabling and disabling industrial themes emerge from the interviews and related discourse such as the positive and negative human contribution(s) and growing global teams involved in manufacture. For industry to be resilient and meet rapid technological and societal change, these themes should be core for manufacturing solutions. Secondary studies should investigate literature and collaborate with engineering industries to test any potential TD interventions.

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Foraging for Transdisciplinary Challenges: Emergent Industrial Themes

Carey¹,

Newnes²,

Lattanzio³

et al. 2021

“…In the 1990s, a growing concern for the environment, a challenge that requires many different disciplines to address, brought with it a requirement for new ways of working, and transdisciplinarity came to the fore [11,12]. From this point forwards the number of published papers referencing the term are seen to accelerate [13]. Subsequently, new technologies and Industry 4.0 have led to increasingly complex engineering systems.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Subsequently, new technologies and Industry 4.0 have led to increasingly complex engineering systems. This has resulted in interest in transdisciplinary working from the engineering academic and research funding communities [13]. There is also evidence that transdisciplinarity has been embraced by practitioners [14,15].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Transdisciplinary Engineering Index: Towards a Disciplinary Maturity Grid

Lattanzio

Carey

Hultin

et al. 2021

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.

“…Furthermore the International Society of Transdisciplinary Engineering (ISTE) [6] states that it "is a methodological approach, explicitly incorporating social sciences to gather information and to guide implementation of engineering solutions in practice" and deepens the concept with "To create engineering solutions that minimise … societal damage, engineering design and practices must involve people with the necessary knowledge and methods to determine the impact of new products and services, not only on client and user satisfaction, but also on long-term sustainability." [7].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Flexible Hiring Personnel Models to Promote Human Satisfaction and Business Profit for Service Industries

Trigos

Doria

2021

In service industries personnel performance is key to achieve business excellence. Until recently, forty to forty eight hours per week labor contracts with equal daily schedules (eight hours per day) was the only way formal employees were hired in some countries. Recently, this trend has changed and some countries started to allow work contracts with less weekly hours and flexible daily schedules. This offers some degrees of freedom to employees to work less than eight hours per day and non-necessarily having the same timetable every workday. The fabric of society is impacted since now work is at reach for many people who cannot work full time schedules for diverse reasons. The contribution of this work is a Transdisciplinary Flextime Hiring Method that considers both employee and company needs. Using organisational design concepts (business management), flexibility is analysed through integer programming modelling (engineering optimisation) to evaluate cost changes resulting from implementing flextime (societal needs). Service companies may justify and implement flextime based on cost reductions, along with its associated improvement of employee satisfaction and commitment. Numerical analysis based on industry data illustrates these concepts and consequences.