Strategic Transformation towards Advanced Mechanical Engineering: A Systematic Review and Taxonomy of Trends and Enabling Factors

The field of Advanced Mechanical Engineering (AME) is undergoing a profound transformation, driven by technological innovation, digitalization, sustainability imperatives, and shifting customer expectations. Despite the strategic relevance of these developments, a coherent and comprehensive understanding of strategic readiness in this domain remains fragmented. This paper addresses this gap by developing and validating a holistic conceptual framework — a taxonomy — using a design research approach. Based on a systematic literature review (from 2023 onward, Web of Science Core Collection), an inductively derived framework was refined to synthesize current scientific knowledge while offering practical utility for industrial application. The aim is twofold: to consolidate state-of-the-art academic insights and to provide a practice-oriented evaluation matrix that companies can apply to assess their strategic positioning and identify key areas for future investment. The resulting taxonomy structures the strategic landscape of AME along two axes: five strategically relevant trends (dimensions of strategic transformation) and four overarching enabling factors (transversal trends), which act as critical levers enabling and influencing the five strategically relevant trends. The findings illustrate how the interplay between these trends and enablers reshapes engineering design and manufacturing systems — highlighting, for instance, modular and flexible design approaches, digital twins, and data-driven decision-making as central to achieving excellence and sustainability. Ultimately, this validated taxonomy provides a robust foundation for future research and serves as a pragmatic tool for practitioners. It supports organizations in systematically organizing and aligning their strategic initiatives and offers actionable insights for academics, engineers, and decision-makers aiming to foster innovation in engineering design and manufacturing in response to emerging challenges.