Why design methodologies are difficult to implement

The area of Design Theory and Methodology has received much attention in the last ten years. However, research in the area of trying to support engineers to be more productive is quite old. The author will discuss some possible reasons why many of the developed methods fail to get implemented and used. The author will argue that one important factor of success for wider implementation and use of design methodologies is the availability of easy-to-use software tools that support the approach in question. The paper will start with a historical view on the development of some approaches to design methodologies and will finish showing how they end up as useful tools. FEA, Finite Element Analysis, QFD, Quality Function Deployment, and TRIZ, Theory of Inventive Problem Solving will be used as examples of how large scale implementation and use depend on the availability of easy-to-use software.