Computer-Aided Engineering (CAE) enables simulation experts to optimize complex models, but faces challenges in user experience (UX) that limit efficiency and accessibility. While artificial intelligence (AI) has demonstrated potential to enhance CAE processes, research integrating these fields with a focus on UX remains fragmented. This paper presents a multivocal literature review (MLR) examining how AI enhances UX in CAE software across both academic research and industry implementations. Our analysis reveals significant gaps between academic explorations and industry applications, with companies actively implementing LLMs, adaptive UIs, and recommender systems while academic research focuses primarily on technical capabilities without UX validation. Key findings demonstrate opportunities in AI-powered guidance, adaptive interfaces, and workflow automation that remain underexplored in current research. By mapping the intersection of these domains, this study provides a foundation for future work to address the identified research gaps and advance the integration of AI to improve CAE user experience.

Federated Learning (FL) and Reinforcement Learning (RL) show significant potential for industrial embedded systems, but their application is hindered by challenges like hardware constraints, data heterogeneity, and safety requirements, creating a research-practice gap. This systematic literature review synthesizes the state-of-the-art deployment of FL and RL on such systems, structuring findings across four challenge categories to identify research gaps. Our analysis of 61 studies reveals a dominance of simulation (66%), and FL (62%), with scarce hardware deployments (18%). The key barriers to industrial adoption are a lack of large-scale, real-world validation and unaddressed scalability challenges.

The extraction of structured metadata from Piping and Instrumentation Diagrams (P&IDs) is a major bottleneck for digitalization in the process industries. Existing methods, based on Optical Character Recognition (OCR), stop at raw text extraction, failing to interpret critical engineering information encoded within variable-format identifiers like pipeline numbers. This paper bridges this semantic gap by introducing a system for the format-aware interpretation of P&ID pipeline metadata. Our hybrid system architecture integrates deep learning for text recognition with domain interpretation rules that allow the system to adapt to new project formats without model retraining. These rules perform validation, error correction, and semantic mapping of raw text to structured data. We validated our system on a challenging dataset of real-world P&IDs from four distinct industrial projects, each with a unique and complex pipeline number format. Our method achieved 91.1% end-to-end accuracy, demonstrating a significant leap in performance over standard OCR tools, which proved insufficient for the task. This work presents a robust solution that unlocks valuable data from non-standardized engineering documents, providing a practical pathway for creating reliable digital twins and supporting plant lifecycle management in the chemical engineering sector.

There are few technologies, if any, that have the potential to change the software-intensive industry to the extent that artificial intelligence (AI) is currently doing. Across industries, companies are adopting these technologies to improve productivity, to increase efficiency and to automate tasks. In products, AI is used for optimization and mass-customization. However, there are few examples of companies that use AI to reinvent and fundamentally change their existing practices. In this paper, we present results from an expert interview study in which we explore how AI is affecting the ways in which companies operate and what steps companies evolve through when advancing their use of AI in their development processes, in their products and in their business processes. The contribution of the paper is two-fold. First, we present the interview results that reflect the adoption and use of AI technologies. As part of our interviews, we also identify a set of key challenges that companies experience. Second, we present an inductively derived three-pronged maturity model that describes how companies transition from traditional towards AI-driven organizations.

Obtaining labels for supervised learning is time-consuming, and practitioners seek to minimize manual labeling. Semi-supervised learning allows practitioners to eliminate manual labeling by including unlabeled data in the training process. With many deep semi-supervised algorithms and applications available, practitioners need guidelines to select the optimal labeling algorithm for their problem. The performance of new algorithms is rarely compared against existing algorithms on real-world data. This study empirically evaluates 16 deep semi-supervised learning algorithms to fill the research gap. To investigate whether the algorithms perform differently in different scenarios, the algorithms are run on 15 commonly known datasets of three datatypes (image, text and sound). Since manual data labeling is expensive, practitioners must know how many manually labeled instances are needed to achieve the lowest error rates. Therefore, this study utilizes different configurations for the number of available labels to study the manual effort required for optimal error rate. Additionally, to study how different algorithms perform on real-world datasets, the researchers add noise to the datasets to mirror real-world datasets. The study utilizes the Bradley-Terry model to rank the algorithms based on error rates and the Binomial model to investigate the probability of achieving an error rate lower than 10%. The results demonstrate that utilizing unlabeled data with semi-supervised learning may improve classification accuracy over supervised learning. Based on the results, the authors recommend FreeMatch, SimMatch, and SoftMatch since they provide the lowest error rate and have a high probability of achieving an error rate below 10% on noisy datasets.

Context: Machine Learning Operations (MLOps) has become a top priority for companies. However, its adoption has become challenging due to the need for proper guidance and awareness. Most of the MLOps solutions available in the market are designed to fit the specific platform, tools and culture of the providers. Objective: The objective is to develop a structured approach to adopting, assessing and advancing MLOps adoption. Methods: The study was conducted based on a multi-case study across fourteen companies. Results: We provide a comprehensive analysis that highlights the similarities and differences in the adoption of MLOps practices among companies. We have also empirically validated the developed MLOps framework and MLOps maturity model. Furthermore, we carefully reviewed the feedback received from practitioners and revised the MLOps framework and maturity model to confirm its effectiveness. Additionally, we develop an MLOps taxonomy for classifying ML use cases based on their context and requirements into the desired stage of the MLOps framework and maturity model. Conclusion: The findings provide companies with a structured approach to adopt, assess, and further advance the adoption of MLOps practices regardless of their current status.

Within the Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) industry, engineers manually create documents based on engineering drawings, which can be time-consuming and prone to human error. For example, the expansion of typical assemblies of instrument items (Instrument Typicals) in Piping and Instrumentation Diagrams (P&IDs) is a labor-intensive task. Each Instrument Typical assembly is depicted in the P&IDs via a simplified representation showing only a subset of the utilized instruments. The expansion activity involves recording all utilized instruments to create an instrument item list document based on the P&IDs for a particular EPC project. Fortunately, Artificial Intelligence (AI) could help automate this process. In this paper, we propose the first method for automating the process of Instrument Typical expansion in P&IDs. The method utilizes computer vision techniques and domain knowledge rules to extract information about the Instrument Typicals from a project's P&IDs and legend sheets. Subsequently, the extracted information is used to automatically generate the listing of all utilized instruments. The effectiveness of our method is evaluated on P&IDs from large industrial EPC projects, resulting in precision rates exceeding 98% and recall rates surpassing 99%. These results demonstrate the suitability of our method for industrial deployment. The successful application of our method has the potential to reduce engineering costs and increase the efficiency of EPC projects. Furthermore, the method could be adapted for additional applications in the EPC industry, which highlights the method's industrial value.

Companies need to continuously innovate to stay competitive. For every innovation, there needs to be a customer, a way to monetize and a way to validate that what is developed adds value to the customer. With digitalization, however, the approach to innovation needs to change. Instead of technology-driven approaches, companies need to adopt more customer-driven approaches to innovation. In this context, we see that companies in the software-intensive embedded systems industry adopt practices that originate in the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) domain. This has proven to be far from trivial, and these practices tend to be associated with several myths in the software-intensive embedded systems industry. In this paper, we present multi-case study research in which we identify five myths that permeate software-intensive embedded systems companies and that have become the typical representation of how these companies work, how they interact with customers and how they do business. We explore these myths referring to them as “five darlings to be killed”, and we detail what the myth is about, why it is incorrect and what happens in companies instead.

Software ecosystems facilitate collaborative innovation and value co-creation among diverse actors through shared technological platforms. However, introducing experimentation practices, such as A/B testing, into these ecosystems within large organizations presents significant challenges due to complex structures, network effects, and complicated organizational dynamics. The challenge is more difficult when it comes to product and service organizations, especially in business-to-business (B2B) or industrial domains. This paper presents an action research study, aiming to overcome the barriers to adopting experimentation-based evolution approaches, conducted within a participating large software-intensive product and service organization, with a vast portfolio of software ecosystems in a wide spectrum of business domains. Following a participatory action research methodology, the research team worked closely with the participating organization through three iterative cycles of planning, action, observation, and reflection. Data sources included a systematic literature review, expert interviews with 25 participants across 17 software ecosystems, and collaborative workshops with internal stakeholders. The study identifies key organizational, technical, and cultural challenges to introducing experimentation in software ecosystems of large organizations, particularly in business-to-business or industrial domains, and exemplifies a roadmap for iteratively addressing such challenges.

This study presents a novel AI-based approach that integrates deep learning techniques for symbol and text recognition with predictive modeling based on historical project data. The aim is to automate and enhance material cost estimation and procurement in Engineering, Procurement, and Construction (EPC) projects. Unlike existing methods, our approach combines data extraction from Piping and Instrumentation Diagrams (P&IDs) with predictive modeling to improve estimation accuracy. In addition, we introduce methods such as tiling and augmentation to optimize the accuracy of symbol recognition in complex and noisy industrial diagrams. We also present methods for managing diverse symbology, improving annotations, and handling background noise in actual industrial blueprints. Furthermore, we apply domain-specific knowledge rules while utilizing available historical data repositories from past engineering projects. Our findings suggest significant potential for engineering time and cost savings in large-scale EPC projects, supported by empirical analysis of development costs in relation to engineering hours saved.