APPLICATION OF INDUSTRIAL METHODS IN ENGINEERING EDUCATION
Year: 2019
Editor: Bohemia, Erik; Kovacevic, Ahmed; Buck, Lyndon; Brisco, Ross; Evans, Dorothy; Grierson, Hilary; Ion, William; Whitfield, Robert Ian
Author: Kind, Simon (1); Dybov, Anton (1); Buchholz, Christian (1); Stark, Rainer (1,2)
Series: E&PDE
Institution: 1: Department of Industrial Information Technology, Technische Universit
Section: Changing Innovation Landscapes 4
DOI number: https://doi.org/10.35199/epde2019.12
ISBN: 978-1-912254-05-7
Abstract
An increased level of product complexity to design individualized products, reduced time for development until delivery and a more interconnected and globalized way of cooperation are actual trends in modern product development processes. These trends and challenges require new, improved skills from future employees, covering a variety of potential industrial methods based on early project planning, interdisciplinary product solutions and a systematic preparation for production. Future employees need to understand the processes and methods of product implementation and production. Especially the last stages of product development require additional attention, accurate preparation and observation, since these are challenging stages for integration and implementation starting from prototyping up to a functional product representation. Therefore, key elements of competent employees in engineering are an understanding of the entire development process in a holistic way and an expertise for test and verification processes, to ensure that the product is fulfilling the defined requirements.
Industrial feedback proves, that these skills are not being taught in an appropriate extend by todays academic education, concluding that todays’ graduates are not well prepared for tomorrow’s job challenges. Following the gaps in today’s education the department for Industrial Information Technology at Technical University Berlin developed and offers a project course program that teaches and applies industry-related development methods addressing advanced master students.
The course program transfers industrial solution elements into academic education. Focus of the related student projects includes a constant review of project management practices in industrial design reviews, as well as the gathering and definition of requirements and specifications. The course program also aims to present and teach methodical concepts as well as preparation and planning of potential industrial enterprises. In addition to this, training skills and development methods for functional prototypes are being taught and applied especially addressing the product integration and testing phase. To present the mentioned work methods and the innovative testing environment, two successfully applied use cases, related to automotive development processes, are described within this paper, covering the whole development process starting from early requirements gathering and accompanied by model-based system engineering. In conclusion of the project, an analysis of the challenges and advantages of prototyping methods, comprehensive testing and verification of new system prototypes and production processes is presented. Moreover, feedback from students of the successful application of system engineering methods enabled the evaluation of the resulting quality of student projects from various angles.
Keywords: Systems engineering, early product and process verification, interactive Design Reviews, prototyping methods