Introduction

The engineering of products faces an increasingly complex and dynamic environment. Megatrends such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and the industrial internet (Industry 4.0) have changed the rules. They require a new kind of engineering and thinking. Only companies that can adapt themselves to the frequent, and sometimes disruptive, changes in complex and dynamic markets are successful in the long term.

The first signs of this new playing field can be observed, for example, from the sharp rise and steep fall of Motorola and Nokia to the tremendous success of Google and Apple. Tremendous things happen in very short timeframes because markets are highly dynamic.

Almost every day you will find a hint of the change in the news. You may remember when PayPal first launched and was revolutionary for the banking sector, but a more recent example is Snapcash (https://support.snapchat.com/en-US/a/snapcash-faq). This allowed users to transfer money from the moment they entered a sum in a Snapchat dialog, whereas traditional money transfers can last days, even if the same bank manages the accounts. However, since this was originally written, the Snapcash service has been withdrawn by Snapchat, which shows how quickly things can change in these industries.

Speaking of Paypal, the founder, Elon Musk, is another example of disruptive change. Traditional automotive vendors greeted his idea of building electric cars with smiles. Now his Tesla cars sell better than traditional luxury cars in Western Europe (https://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-0419-tesla-germany-20160419-story.html). The same goes for SpaceX.

There are many publications available that capture a high-level view of the impact on IoT and Industry 4.0. This book closes the gap between those high-level reflections and the need for daily engineering methods and tools to face the upcoming challenges.

We start by expressing our motivation behind the book before going on to describe the first three industrial revolutions and their consequences. We then introduce the idea of the predicted fourth industrial revolution. In light of the fourth industrial revolution, the third chapter depicts the need for a new kind of engineering. The fourth chapter provides valuable principles, patterns, methods, and tools that engineering organizations need if they want to be successful in the new engineering playing field.

This book covers many exciting topics, such as the business model canvas, model-based system engineering, Industry 4.0, the industrial internet, and much more. Each of these topics deserves its own book, and those books are already available.

Therefore, I only give an overview of these topics in order for you to be able to understand the concepts and take the first steps. In addition to these informative and useful overviews, the book depicts the relationships between the concepts.

This book fills up your toolbox so that you can master the new engineering game.