The 17th edition of the International Conference on Axiomatic Design (ICAD) took place at MIT in Boston on 24 and 25 June. UNIDEMI was represented by its members João Fradinho, António Gabriel-Santos and Miguel Cavique.
During the conference, a dinner was held to honor Professor Nam Pyo Suh for his creation of Axiomatic Design Theory. The dinner also celebrated his 90th birthday.
Professor Suh began devising and developing this theory in the 1970s. In 1990, he published the reference book of Axiomatic Design (AD), The Principles of Design. In 2001 and 2005, the books “Axiomatic Design: Advances and Applications” and “Complexity: Theory and Applications” were published, respectively.
The first study carried out at DEMI in which AD is mentioned was in 1989 “A importância do toleranciamento na ligação entre o projecto e a produção” by António Mourão (Pedagogical Aptitude and Scientific Capacity Assessments).
Over the years, UNIDEMI members have published many scientific articles related to Axiomatic Design (AD). The first one was “O Enquadramento do QFD num Contexto de Projecto Axiomático” by A. Mourão and A. Gonçalves-Coelho in 2001.
In 2021, Springer published the book “Design Engineering and Science”, in which some chapters were written by members from UNIDEM (M. Cavique, A. Gabriel-Santos, A. Mourão, A. Gonçalves-Coelho and J. Fradinho).
Professor Nam P. Suh’s worldwide recognition is evidenced by the award of 11 honorary doctorates across four continents, one of which was conferred by NOVA University Lisbon in 2013, which was proposed by DEMI of NOVA FCT.
Introduced in the 2012/2013 academic year by Professor A. Gonçalves Coelho, the UC “Design Theory and Methodologies” within the Mechanical Engineering program at NOVA FCT pioneered the integration of Axiomatic Design (AD) as a core instructional framework in Portuguese higher education.
Complementing this curricular implementation, DEMI has established a robust research tradition in the field, as evidenced by the frequent supervision of master’s dissertations that utilize AD across both mechanical and industrial engineering courses.
In addition, six PhD thesis were completed at DEMI/UNIDEMI, in mechanical engineering and industrial engineering and management, using methodologies that incorporated AD, and two are currently in progress.