Digitalization is increasingly transforming mechanical engineering and manufacturing technologies, bringing with it not only unparalleled control and flexibility over production systems but so much more.

In 2017, there's more variety to be found under the hood of a car than ever. Electric, hybrid and internal combustion engines all sit next to a range of transmission types, creating an ever-increasingly complex evolutionary web of technology choices for what we put into our automobiles. But every evolutionary tree has a few dead end branches that ended up never going anywhere.