In this study, we examine innovative design practices on the Saint-Nazaire Airbus factory shop floor. The engineering and manufacturing engineering departments are in charge of the design of products and their industrialization, even though the factory is usually seen as a place for manufacturing, rather than design. However, there is also design activity in a factory that is devoted to the optimization of manufacturing processes. In this study, we highlight an alternative form of design that relies on a collective exploratory approach. A total of 30 projects from the Saint-Nazaire Airbus factory were selected and analyzed. Of these, two were selected as case studies to illustrate the factory's different design methods. Subsequently, quantitative analysis provided evidence of the existence of two design regimes: closed prescription and expandable prescription. The resulting solutions were examined, and it was found that designs under the expandable prescription regime provided more robust long-term solutions. This study offers new perspectives for reexamining innovation in manufacturing and exploring design activity on factory shop floors.

In industry, there is at once a strong need for innovation and a need to preserve the existing system of production. Thus, although the literature insists on the necessity of the current change toward Industry 4.0, how to implement it remains problematic because the preservation of the factory is at stake. Moreover, the question of the evolution of the system depends on its innovative capability, but it is difficult to understand how a new rule can be designed and implemented in a factory. This tension between preservation and innovation is often explained in the literature as a process of creative destruction. Looking at the problem from another perspective, this article models the factory as a site of creative heritage, enabling creation within tradition, i.e., creating new rules while preserving the system of rules. Two case studies are presented to illustrate the model. The paper shows that design in the factory relies on the ability to validate solutions. To do so, the design process can explore and give new meaning to the existing rules. The role of innovation management is to choose the degree of revision of the rules and to make it possible.

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