The Section of Engineering Design & Product Development (K&P) at the Technical University of Denmark is an internationally active research unit, founded in 1952. The Section has around 30 employees including 12 PhD-students.
The Section’s vision is to conduct research and education that raises the quality and innovation in product development. This is achieved through the provision of tools and methods to support the development of innovative products and product/service-systems throughout their lifecycles. Current research includes product architecture, design cognition and knowledge, product/service-systems, sustainable design, conceptualisation, intelligent mechatronics, user-driven design and design automation. Significant research results include contributions to the Theory of Technical Systems, Design for X and Integrated Product Development.
The Section’s education activities cover mechanical engineering and the recent founding of a 5-year programme leading to the Master of Engineering in Design & Innovation, which embraces a combination of technical scientific and social scientific topics. We have close industry collaboration across a number of sectors, including consumer products, healthcare/medical, aerospace, maritime, industrial devices, etc.
K&P has a long history of involvement in the ICED conference series. Under the former WDK organisation, Professor Mogens Myrup Andreasen was one of the initiators of the first ICED in Rome in 1981. In 1983, the conference came to Copenhagen, where our university was the host for ICED.
Today K&P is part of the newly formed (January 2008) Department of Management Engineering, a department with strong ambitions in design, innovation and engineering management research and teaching. K&P’s research and teaching foundation play a key role in the development and strategy of the new department, which has high academic and industrial collaboration ambitions.