Johan Malmqvist

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at Chalmers University of Technology

In the rapidly evolving landscape of engineering education, the shift toward online and hybrid lab formats requires a critical examination of their impact on students' learning experiences. This study investigates the experiences of 82 students in a logic control course with campus, remote, and simulation labs, through the lens of the Community of...

Software implementations of traditional engineering design methods can potentially enrich the original methods. A study was conducted to better understand how concept generation can be facilitated using software. Participants of the study were asked to generate concepts using either specialized software, or by using traditional means, for applying...

Despite the recognized importance of datasets in data-driven design approaches, their extensive study remains limited. We review the current landscape of design datasets and highlight the ongoing need for larger and more comprehensive datasets. Three categories of challenges in dataset development are identified. Analyses show critical dataset gaps...

Lab training is a key element in most engineering education programs in preparation for engineering profession tasks. Universities worldwide are exploring new possibilities and different forms to arrange online and blended labs as an alternative to pure campus training. This study compares online and blended lab setups in four cases of engineering...

Additive Manufacturing (AM) has traditionally been used for prototyping of products, however, in the last few decades, it has seen a rising growth in the manufacture of final products. The addition of AM as a manufacturing method in the portfolio of a company's production capabilities increases the complexity of decision-making. This is because the...

This paper presents the development and evaluation of a software tool used to create morphological matrices. The tool was tested in two university product development courses for two years, and was used by hundreds of students. A questionnaire and a focus group was utilized to evaluate the tool. While the tool worked mostly as intended, it had some...

Whole-rock geochemical analysis is a standard method to measure the chemical composition of ores. Analysis of refractory ore metals such as Ta and W typically requires fused bead and acid digestion followed by inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES) and inductively coupled mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). Since these techniques...

The CDIO Initiative is going through a process of reconsidering and updating the CDIO approach for engineering education development. Previous work resulted in substantial updates of the twelve CDIO standards and the introduction of "optional" CDIO standards. This paper reports on a similar review and update of the CDIO Syllabus to version 3.0. It...

Practical skills training in laboratories are important elements and learning outcomes in engineering education, where leaners, through exploration, experimentation and reflection engage in inquiry-based learning that stimulate the acquisition of deep conceptual domain knowledge and inquiry skills. Traditional lab environments are very costly to ma...

Customized pharmaceutical products aim to comply with the individual needs of a patient to enhance the treatment outcome. The current pharmaceutical production paradigm is, however, dominated by mass production, where the pharmaceutical products embrace a one-size-fits-all design with a low possibility of treatment optimization to patient needs. Th...

Extending the lifespan of products and parts is seen as a solution in the transition towards a circular economy. There are many proposed design approaches argued to facilitate this. However, extending the lifespan of products and parts is not always desirable, and product developers should instead strive to design for a specific longevity; the prod...

Emerging research within the field of personalised medicines has aimed to enhance patient treatment through the use of pharmaceutical products that are customised to the individual needs and preferences of the patient. The currently dominant production platforms of pharmaceutical products, however, regard a mass production paradigm and are thus unf...

Product development companies collect data in form of Engineering Change Requests for logged design issues, tests, and product iterations. These documents are rich in unstructured data (e.g. free text). Previous research affirms that product developers find that current IT systems lack capabilities to accurately retrieve relevant documents with uns...

(Available online at: https://research.chalmers.se/publication/519263)

(Available online at: https://research.chalmers.se/publication/519262)

Pharmaceutical product customization, a prerequisite for personalized medicines, is currently a widely researched topic. Patient characteristics can be mapped and translated into parameters for designing patients’ individual treatment, i.e., the dosage form. However, current pharmaceutical manufacturing is dominated by mass production and lacks the...

An effort to update the CDIO Standards from version 2.1 to 3.0 was started in 2017 (Malmqvist et al., 2017) and further outlined in 2019 (Malmqvist et at., 2019). The aims were to incorporate external changes to the context of engineering education, to address the critique that had been raised against earlier versions of the standards, and to estab...

An effort to update the CDIO Standards from version 2.1 to 3.0 was started in 2017 (Malmqvist et al., 2017) and further outlined in 2019 (Malmqvist et at., 2019). The aims were to incorporate external changes to the context of engineering education, to address criticism that had been raised against earlier versions of the standards, and to establis...

Although well researched and praised in academic publications, function modelling (FM) does not have gained much traction in industrial application. To investigate into possible reasons for this, this publication researches literature of nine different projects where enhanced function-means modelling has been applied. The projects are analysed for...

Many research students find challenges when validating their research. Especially when they have expectations to contribute to both practice and the research body of knowledge. This paper argues that a key to successful validation of design research lies in the ability to focus on what to validate in advance of how to validate. The paper provide a...

The problem at hand is that vast amount of data on industrial changes is captured and stored; yet the present challenge is to systematically retrieve and use them in a purposeful way. This paper presents an industrial case study where complex product development processes are modeled using the design structure matrix (DSM) to analyze engineering ch...

The quality of a coated pharmaceutical tablet can be strongly affected by the interactions of water droplets with the porous substrate during processes such as coating process. Three different mechanisms co-exist in the coating process: water spreading, absorption and evaporation. Disentangling the fundamental understanding of these phenomena can t...

Despite advances in pharmacological research providing means for individually customized patient attribute treatments, the 'one-size-fits-all' paradigm remains. Customization is associated with cost increases and the value assessment of customized medicinal products shows upon a narrow economic focus. Inspired by value models, emerging in manufactu...

The engineering design community needs to development tools and methods now to support emerging technological and societal trends. While many forecasts exist for technological and societal changes, this paper reports on the findings of a workshop, which addressed trends in engineering design to 2040. The paper summarises the key findings from the s...

Product development companies are collecting data in form of Engineering Change Requests for logged design issues and Design Guidelines to accumulate best practices. These documents are rich in unstructured data (e.g., free text) and previous research has pointed out that product developers find current it systems lacking capabilities to accurately...

The topic of this paper is the CDIO Standards, specifically the formulation of CDIO Standards version 3.0. The paper first reviews the potential change drivers that motivate a revision of the Standards. Such change drivers are identified both externally (i.e., from outside of the CDIO community) and internally. It is found that external change driv...

Tools for bibliometric data analysis offer opportunities to analyze the evolution of a field of study over time. VOSViewer is a popular tool for such analyses, allowing the user to create and interpret visualizations of publication data, such as word co-occurrence analysis, co-authorship networks, and geographic patterns of collaboration. Meikleham...

In this paper a framework of key competencies for sustainability defined by UNESCO is used to evaluate the relevance of the CDIO Syllabus for promoting engineering education for sustainable development. The evaluation is performed in two steps. First, topics, terms and concepts in the CDIO Syllabus that corresponds to the different UNESCO key compe...

Video utilization can be a powerful tool for teachers to stimulate students' interest and support flexible and adaptive learning. Successful video-based learning implementation cannot be assured without careful consideration regarding desired quality, learning outcomes and video development methods. The investigation and sharing of experiences cons...

Challenge-based learning (CBL) is a multidisciplinary approach that encourages students to work actively with peers, teachers and stakeholders in society to identify complex challenges, formulate relevant questions and take action for sustainable development. In this paper, it is argued that CBL can be viewed as an evolution of the Conceive, Design...

Additive manufacturing (AM) is being proposed as a revolutionary manufacturing technology, promising significant advantages both from a design and production perspective. One challenge is the disruptive nature of AM and its impact on all life cycle phases. This paper reports from a demonstrator project highlighting digitalization and process implic...

Recent breakthroughs in diagnostics, genotyping and so forth, has created opportunities to satisfy the individual therapeutic needs of each patient, i.e. treatment can be tailored according to the patient’s biological attributes as well as according to behavioural and environmental factors. Medicines, when tailored to the individual needs are often...

There is a growing need for data expertise and data analysis. Companies are looking more towards analytics for improvement opportunities within the business and products. Data collection is growing at a fast pace and we need capabilities to be able to analyze it. The data volume that companies are sitting on makes this task even more important. The...

This paper aims at demonstrating the applicability of video learning in CDIO-based project courses and at evaluating to what extent it benefits students. The courses are Machine Elements (PPU210), Product Planning - Needs and Opportunities (PPU085) and Engineering Design and Optimization (PPU190) in the Mechanical Engineering programme at Chalmers...

In Europe, the existing MSc programmes which are linked to the thematic Raw Material content often focus mainly on technical knowledge in itself, and students graduate as professionals who know how to solve pre-defined technical problems. Students in such programmes seldom practice entrepreneurial, communication and innovation skills at a level tha...

In order to design competitive products that meet today's challenges, future engineers need knowledge and experience in applying and integrating optimization theory in the engineering design process. The Chalmers course Engineering Design and Optimization addresses this need and was developed and first offered in the fall semester of 2013. This pap...

Large complex system development projects, such as complete truck development projects, take several years to carry out. They involve hundreds of engineers who develop tens of thousands of parts and millions of lines of codes. During a project, many design decisions often need to be changed due to emergence of new information. The bulk of these cha...

The aims of the paper are to present a set of general recommendations for how to implement CDIO in non-engineering programmes, to show how they can be applied in practice, and to discuss associated benefits and challenges. The application of the recommendations is demonstrated in case studies of non-engineering programmes that have implemented CDIO...

Swedish models for evaluation of Quality in Higher Education (QHE models) have historically been designed by national agencies for higher education (HSV, UK-ämbetet). However, the proposal for the coming national QHE model assigns more responsibility to individual universities to develop their own QHE models. Chalmers University of Technology is de...

The paper presents the approach to complex training of managers and faculty staff for system modernisation of Russian engineering education. As a methodological basis of design and implementation of the faculty development programme, the CDIO (Conceive-Design-Implement-Operate) Approach was chosen due to compliance of its concept to the purposes an...

Product configuration is when an artifact from a product family is assembled from a set of predefined components that can only be combined in certain ways. These ways are defined by configuration rules. The product developers inspect the configuration rules when they develop new configuration rules or modify the configuration rules set. The inspect...

The currently important competences of university managers and faculty staff include not only teaching and assessing skills, but also ability to develop and to execute a strategy of consistent modernization of educational programmes according to the purposes of university. The aim of this paper is to propose a model of how the CDIO framework (CDIO...

Some designers are more successful than others. They have the ability to repeatedly generate new and innovative solutions to challenging problems. In this paper, we refer to designers who possess this level of skill as “excellent designers”. It would seem interesting to identify the characteristics of such individuals in order to better understand...

This paper proposes a systematic development process for product configuration rules. The approach was to first conduct a literature review on product configuration research and knowledge-based systems (KBS). In combination within sights from empirical studies in the automotive industry this resulted in a generalised process model for the developme...

This book describes an approach to engineering education that integrates a comprehensive set of personal, interpersonal, and professional engineering skills with engineering disciplinary knowledge in order to prepare innovative and entrepreneurial engineers. The education of engineers is set in the context of engineering practice, that is, Conceivi...

The last three chapters have discussed answers to the second of the two questions central to the reform of engineering education: How can we do better at ensuring that students learn these skills? Integrated curriculum, design-implement experiences, integrated learning, and active and experiential learning are the main components of a reformed engi...

The purpose of engineering education is to provide the learning required by students to become successful engineers—technical expertise, social awareness, and a bias toward innovation. This combined set of knowledge, skills, and attitudes is essential to strengthening productivity, entrepreneurship, and excellence in an environment that is increasi...

The CDIO approach responds in an integrated and pragmatic way to the historical context in which engineering education finds itself and to the challenges that lie in the future. We call the collaboration of universities with at least one engineering program that has adopted a CDIO approach to engineering education the CDIO Initiative. The collabora...

In this chapter, we continue our discussion of the resolution of the second question central to the improvement of engineering education—How can we do better at ensuring that students learn these skills? In Chap. 4, we examined how the curriculum can be restructured and re-tasked in order to strengthen the links between the disciplines and weave th...

The objective of engineering education is to educate students who are “ready to engineer,” that is, broadly prepared with both pre-professional engineering skills and deep knowledge of the technical fundamentals. It is the task of engineering educators to continuously improve the quality of undergraduate engineering education in order to meet this...

Adapting and implementing a CDIO approach can be of great value to educational programs and the students they serve. However, that means change—an inherently challenging endeavor, especially at a university. Program leaders are more likely to succeed in this change process if faculty are equipped with an understanding of how to bring about change a...

The aim of this paper is to compare matrix- and list-based configuration rule visualization methods in order to find the effects of using a certain visualization method. Especially, the visualizations’ impact on readability and how the configuration rules are authored are studied. A case study was conducted at two automotive manufacturing companies...

Within the higher education system, criteria for promotion based on research quality and contribution are well established and widely accepted. For teaching, on the other hand, such criteria have generally not been developed and implemented to the same degree. This poses a challenge for the implementation of the Conceive-Design-Implement-Operate (C...

This paper presents the results of an empirical study of a project whose aim was to develop a driveline for commercial vehicle applications containing a totally new mechatronic sub-system with a significant amount of new functions and interfaces. The purpose of the empirical study was to identify areas where explicit knowledge management efforts ar...

This paper presents and analyses the integration with progression of education for sustainable development in Chalmers University of Technology's MScEng programme in Mechanical Engineering. The program has an aim and structure that emphasises employability, integration of general engineering skills, authentic engineering experiences with a focus on...

Collaborative product development is a method for reducing costs, but there is a risk of severe obstacles during the product documentation exchange. Product documentation for configurable products describes how parts can be combined with so-called 'configuration rules'. This paper is based on a case study of the configuration rule exchange in a col...

In the development of complex products product configuration systems are often used to support the development process. Item Usage Rules (IURs) are conditions for including specific items in products bills of materials based on a high-level product description. Large number of items and significant complexity of IURs make it difficult to maintain a...

To stay competitive, a large company must make use of its size and gain economy of scale, one way being through reusing designed parts and technology knowledge globally throughout the organization. This paper describes a case study performed at a company that is implementing a new Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) system, globally across several d...

Not all investments in PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) are successful. Measuring the business effects of a PLM is essential, but can only be applied subsequent to solution deployment. It could be more powerful to make an early evaluation of the PLM solution, resulting in the business benefits, making corrections possible prior to deployment. In...

Complexity of different systems is often seen as a negative issue in companies because it generates costs. Therefore, the reduction and avoidance of complexity are design strategies for coping with the complexity in product development. This paper presents a method to evaluate structural complexity of a product family at an early phase of the desig...

The rapid development of computers and the internet has given new opportunities for engineering work as well as for teaching and learning. The use of advanced modern mathematics is becom-ing increasingly more popular in the engineering community and and most problem solutions and developments incorporate high precision digital models, numerical ana...

The CDIO approach intends to raise the quality of engineering education programs, worldwide by including a number of quality assurance (QA) tools such as the CDIO Standards, Syllabus, and self-evaluation model. CDIO programmes are also evaluated by external standards. Therefore, a CDIO programme needs a quality assurance system that fulfills extern...

In this paper, a recently conducted product lifecycle management (PLM) implementation project is analysed. The aims are to investigate whether published product lifecycle management (PLM) implementation guidelines are relevant to and used in practice, and, if so, to assess how useful they are for guiding project execution. This paper presents an ex...

This paper describes a quality assurance project, which is conducted within the framework of the Nordic Five Tech Alliance (N5T), a strategic alliance of the five leading technical universities in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. The project is concerned with the development of a common quality enhancement tool. The tool is designed for conduct...

The paper analyses different strategies for introducing PDM (Product Data Management) systems in engineering companies. The identification of the strategies is based on observations from case studies in Swedish industry. The strategies are described with respect of how to perform them, their potential to support the integrated product development p...

Modern engineering education programs seek to impart to the students a broad base of knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary to become successful young engineers. This array of abilities is represented in the CDIO Syllabus, an attempt to create a rational, complete, consistent, and generalizable set of goals for undergraduate engineering educati...

This paper outlines the results of a project aiming to develop and apply methods for service co-creation with customers, focusing on the early phases of service development. The project is collaboration between a manufacturing firm in the automotive industry, one of their B2B-customers (a transportation firm), as well as a university, all in Sweden...

The aim of this research work has been to investigate the need to formalize the systems engineering processes for embedded systems at a large automotive company. Further, formalization could be developed by using a commercial Product Data Management (PDM) system as a hub for systems engineering data is investigated. It was found that the case compa...

This study has been conducted at Scania CV in Embedded Systems Development. It was performed with a focus on systems architecture and support for requirements engineering. The study has focused on assessing the company culture and legacy in order to establish the need and benefit of increased formalization. The paper concludes that formalized requi...

The topic of the paper is information models that are the basis for product configuration in the automotive industry. The subject is examined from both a theoretical and a practical perspective. In an empirical study, the product configuration information model of an automotive firm is mapped out and issues perceived as challenging by the firm iden...

This paper describes the implementation of a wiki system based on the wiki engine MediaWiki for the purpose of engineering knowledge capture and sharing in an internal R&D unit that is part of a global group of companies in the commercial vehicle industry. Three different knowledge processes are studied; 1. Knowledge creation that is based on a soc...

The chapter describes the past and future for Quality Assurance programs in Sweden. The Swedish National Agency for Higher Education is the government agency responsible for the evaluation of the quality of university education in Sweden. One of the purposes of the most recent national evaluation of Swedish engineering degree programs in 2005 was t...

The aim of the study is to implement a service-oriented architecture (SOA) and evaluate its applicability to an industrial case, using PLM services 2.0. This paper focuses on IT support for engineering change management (ECM). ECM is a cross-functional process including several technology fields and life cycle stages. The product information is acc...

This paper aims to bridge education for sustainable development (ESD) and integrated learning of generic competencies applying the CDIO model, by describing how ESD can be implemented into an existing CDIO-based program. It was found that the CDIO syllabus is exhaustive regarding sustainability though not under a separate headline; this would be be...

This paper describes a study carried out in the automotive industry regarding implementation of a service oriented PLM architecture. The study aim is to implement and evaluate a service oriented architecture (SOA) and its applicability to an industrial case. The empirical base for the study has been the development of a demonstrator that implements...

This paper makes a review of the current standards and practices regarding, PLM architecture and modelling languages for information and system modelling. As well as it makes a short review of the trends in automotive and aerospace PLM applications in industry. It is concluded that enterprise and PLM modelling can be and is being performed in indus...

This chapter broadens and concludes the discussion of the second question central to the reform of engineering education: How can we do better at ensuring that students learn these skills? The curriculum design process, presented in Chapter Four, develops an approach to integrating learning outcomes into the curriculum. Design-implement projects, d...

When engaging in the reform of engineering education, it is important to understand its historical context. For over 150 years, educational institutions have played a major role in shaping the skills and professional identities of engineers. During this period, the appropriate approach to engineering education has been the subject of constant discu...

We will now develop a comprehensive approach to answering the first of the two questions, central to the reform of engineering education, posed in Chapter Two.

This book describes an approach to engineering education that integrates a comprehensive set of personal and interpersonal skills, and process, product, and system building skills with disciplinary knowledge. The education of engineers is set in the context of engineering practice, that is, Conceiving, Designing, Implementing, and Operating (CDIO)...