Towards a Disciplinary Framework for Engineering and Manufacture

Abstract

This paper presents the need to create a disciplinary conceptual framework. As participants and interactions of expertise in a project rise so too can costs, meaning if a project is transdisciplinary, being at higher levels of disciplinarity could become an expensive option. However, approaches for measuring levels of disciplinarity remain ill-defined and lack structure, so progress in this area is difficult to measure with a multiplicity of disciplinary scales identified. It is our view to guide rigorous scientific progress and meaningful industry support, a definitive conceptual framework, is required to underpin appropriate measures. This is currently lacking and to this end here, we outline interrelated studies to develop a disciplinary conceptual framework, detailing two studies to establish core transdisciplinary concepts for engineering and manufacturing. We conclude detailing ongoing work to measure aspects of disciplinarity in industry, leading to the creation of a disciplinary indexing tool/process.