Functorial factorizations in the category of model categories (Q2231003)

It is familiar that the category of small categories admits a cofibrantly generated model category structure, called the \textit{canonical model category structure}, whose weak equivalences are the equivalences of categories. \textit{M. Hovey} [Model categories. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society (1999; Zbl 0909.55001), p. 21] asked, after noting that the class of Quillen equivalences is closed under retracts and enjoys the two-out-of-three property, whether a similar result holds for the category of small model categories as objects and Quillen adjunctions as morphisms, where the weak equivalences are expected to be the Quillen equivalences. It is easy to see that the category of small model categories and Quillen adjunctions is neither complete nor cocomplete [\textit{D. G. Quillen}, Homotopical algebra. Berlin-Heidelberg-New York: Springer-Verlag (1967; Zbl 0168.20903)], so that we can't hope to see the result hold verbatim. Nevertheless, introducing a more flexible notion of \textit{premodel category}, \textit{R. W. Barton} [``A model 2-category of enriched combinatorial premodel categories'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:2004.12937}] established that there is a \textit{model \(2\)-category structure} on the \(2\)-category of combinatorial premodel categories, particularly demonstrating that a map of combinatorial premodel categories can be factored in two different ways beholden to the so-called small object argument. The principal objective in this paper is to address the existence of two ways of functional factorization for Quillen adjunctions between model categories (``trivial cofibration followed by a fibration'' and ``cofibration followed by a trivial fibration''), pursuing some of the ideas in [\textit{H. Bacard}, High. Struct. 4, No. 1, 57--114 (2020; Zbl 1453.18023)], where one of these factorization was established for Quillen adjunctions between combinatorial model categories. The other factorization generalizes the construction of the cylinder object and path object of a model category in [``Theories homotopiques de Quillen combinatoires et derivateurs de Grothendieck'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:math/0603339}].