Since the beginning of the sixties, industry has increasingly complained about a lack of capable, creative designers. The discussions and studies carried out by the VDI and industry under the working title "Design bottleneck" resulted in the establishment of numerous chairs for design methodology towards the end of the 1960s.
As early as 1965, the TU Braunschweig established the Institute for Design Theory, Machine and Precision Engineering Elements (IKMF) under the direction of Prof. Dr.-Ing. Karlheinz Roth. Prof. Roth carried out a wide range of pioneering work in the field of design methodology, e.g. by developing flow charts to structure design activities or developing design catalogs for the structured, easy-to-access preparation of design knowledge. In the field of machine elements, the name Roth stands for the systematic development of special gearing - especially involute gearing, which enables single-tooth pinions. In addition, the development of program systems for computer support of the design process began under Prof. Roth.
At the end of the 1980s, the industry was faced with completely new challenges. The pressure of competition, time and costs had increased due to increasing globalization and continues to rise to this day. Products were becoming more and more complex and product development processes more and more complicated.
In 1988, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Hans-Joachim Franke took over the management of the Institute of Design Engineering and took on the new tasks, particularly in the areas of variant management, cost and recycling-friendly design, process optimization and targeted computer support for the development process. Prof. Franke is a founding member of the Berliner Kreis and a member of the Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft für Maschinenelemente, Konstruktionstechnik und Produktentwicklung e.V. (WGMK). In 2011, both were merged to form the Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft für Produktentwicklung (WiGeP). Prof. Franke and his team have published around 150 specialist publications. During his more than twenty years as head of the institute, Prof. Franke has successfully guided more than 40 doctoral students to their doctorates.
In the years from 1988 to 2009, new foundations for the methodical development of complex products were created in priority programs and special research areas (DFG) at the institute and in cooperation with other institutes of the TU Braunschweig. Through many industrial projects and publicly funded joint projects (e.g. AiF, BMBF, EU, MWK), the methods and procedures developed were transferred from the university to industrial practice in a targeted and task-specific manner.
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Thomas Vietor took over as head of the institute in 2009 when he was appointed Professor of Design Engineering. Thanks to his industrial experience as a product developer in the automotive industry, he brings together the expertise of vehicle and design engineering. Under Prof. Vietor, the IK became a member of the Lower Saxony Research Center for Automotive Engineering (NFF), where it is responsible for the research field of flexible vehicle concepts.
In the area of teaching, new teaching concepts were initiated under Prof. Vietor and all previous courses were revised and modernized. In addition to e-learning solutions, lecture recordings were introduced to support individual teaching. In terms of both teaching and research, Prof. Vietor has expanded international relations with China, India and Mexico.
From 2013 to 2018, the Vibroacoustics working group headed by Prof. Dr.-Ing Sabine Christine Langer was part of the institute. Since 2019, Ms. Langer has been head of the newly founded Institute of Acoustics at TU Braunschweig.