People, product and process: interactive multimedia case study in integrated design and manufacturing strategies

With the changes in industry practice and the business climate, there is an increased need for restructuring our college curricula to address the needs of the competitive market place. The NSF funded Synthesis Coalition are creating new curricula that expose students to creative synthesis and open ended problem solving experiences and teaching process in addition to technical content. Synthesis based instruction is rich in "real life" engineering material, in which theory is related to engineering practice through the use of engineering case studies that are integrated throughout the curriculum with actual engineering products and processes, open ended design problems, and "best practices" from industry. Instruction is structured so that students are able to develop their written, verbal, and graphical communication skills as well as their course knowledge through group design projects, case role playing and class discussion. "People, Products, and Process" is a multimedia courseware package that was developed to assist engineering, science and business students in understanding and contextualizing the fundamental concepts of the various functional roles in product design and process development. In this courseware, students are presented with open ended problems that require them to explore the inherent tradeoffs between the functional perspectives within a corporation. The courseware is based on actual examples from a diverse range of industries and manufacturing models.