i think today is better to focus on real meaning of every thing not only manufacturing and design!
as a researcher and architect i think is our responsibility to make people happier and More healthy because if you fell ok with environment you have better life!and our first environment is the place we spend more time,home!
Dear Vysakh, you may wish to focus upon application of 'Circular Economy' (CE)principles to manufacturing and design. This involves designing products and systems so they can be kept in 'closed loops' and reused multiple times over their extended life-cycle, so they deliver more value/economic benefit, jobs and services with less waste, emissions and pollution. A key principle of CE is 'servitization', whereby manufacturers provide products as part of a service, retaining ownership/stewardship, taking them back after each use, and reusing, repairing or remanufacturing. This opens up new business opportunities for manufacturers through selling performance and new forms of customer relationships. European Commission has adopted a CE strategy and China has a CE policy. You may wish to refer to articles on my ResearchGate, or that of Prof Walter Stahel, founder of CE. Also refer you to 'Manufacturing Servitization in the Asia-Pacific, Wang, Kosoka and Xing (eds), Springer 2016. Best wishes, David
I recommend PDE models of production systems. This is a new approach in modelling production systems and control systems (the first works appeared in 2000). Research is conducted in the company Intel, General Motors, Volks Wagen. One of the authors of the works is Karl Kempf (Director Decision Engineering
Intel). Review of the work is given in https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312305519_OVERVIEW_OF_MODELS_OF_MANUFACTURED_SYSTEMS
Current trend in manufacturing centres around Industry 4.0 and its implications in supply chain management. This can focus in different areas if Cloud Manufacturing, Additive Manufacturing, Internet of Things etc. For instance in the subject of Cloud Manufacturing the issues related to interoperability of different machines is a current challenge.
I agree with Hamid Moradlou. And a new kind of model (PDE-model) was developed to solve these problems (supply chain management) in conditions of uncertainty. Research in this direction can become the basis of the PhD thesis.