To create innovative connected products and services, more and more interdisciplinary development efforts across industries covering hardware, software and business model design are required. One example for this is smart textiles. Here, electronics such as sensors and actuators extend the function of the textile structure, so that users can interact with their smart textile and access additional services via software applications. Medical technology, sports, safety monitoring and human-machine interfaces are examples of areas of application. The GTAI (Germany Trade & Invest) predicts a market of approximately €5bn for 2022, growing from €1.3bn in 2017.However, this potential has not yet been reached: products have not moved beyond prototype or small series production and industrial scale production processes are missing. In particular, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are reluctant to accept the challenge of the complex value chain of smart textiles: in addition to textile and electronics suppliers, software and application developers, product designers and manufacturers (system integrators) need to be coordinated. Technical challenges include the complex design of interfaces between textile and electronic components, the miniaturisation of all components for the seamless integration in textiles as well as their usability and durability. To solve these challenges, expertise from different knowledge domains such as textile and electronics production needs to be combined during the product development process (PDP), keeping in mind the aim of scalable, connected production processes instead of only prototyping.
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