Benchmarking: a process basis for teaching design

Benchmarking is a tool that has been employed for many years to search for 'best practices' in, for example, business operations, customer relations, product design and manufacturing. To our knowledge, its application to the process of teaching design, in a university setting, is novel. As part of the Manufacturing Engineering Education Partnership (MEEP) we have restructured the way we teach design by providing more 'hands on' experience for the students by more closely emulating an industrial setting and by incorporating a benchmarking process approach. Our implementation of benchmarking relies on product dissection to enable students to establish a database for analyzing a design in terms of its function, performance, and manufacture. We have introduced the concept in our Sophomore/Junior level Product Dissection and Junior level Introduction to Design courses as a means for the students to experience working on real commercial products. Examples of such products are the electric drill, the hand held mixer, the food blender, and the oscillating cooling fan. The actual selection of the product and its complexity, or simplicity is less important in comparison to the process the students follow in order to arrive at the desired results and conclusions. The process we have employed, the resource requirements, and the educational benefits we have observed from using this process over the last two academic years are described.