Engineer-to-order companies are reserved on adoption of current engineering trends - an empirical study

The ability to identify trends is vital for engineer-to-order companies in order to remain competitive and to enable an early response to changes. However engineering trends have either been described from a primarily theoretical point of view or the focus lied on a detailed description of single trends. This contribution identifies 12 general trends in engineering based on a literature review. It also provides practical insight by means of an internet survey with industrial practitioners. The survey focuses on the practical potential of the identified trends and assesses which methods, processes, IT-systems and business models are implemented by companies to react on the trends. The results show that the majority of the trends have high potential and significant impact on engineering processes. However, companies only sporadically implement corresponding measures to react on these trends. Especially measures which require high change and integration efforts have a low degree of implementation in industrial practice.