The Manufacturing Engineering Education Partnership

Educational Objectives: The mission of MEEP is to integrate design, manufacturing and business realities into the engineering curriculum. This is accomplished by instituting a new practice-based curriculum and physical facilities for product realization (called the Learning Factory). The key element in this approach is active learning - the combination of curriculum revitalization with coordinated opportunities for application and hands-on experience; thereby erasing the traditional boundaries between lecture and laboratory, academia and industrial practice.

Participants: The Manufacturing Engineering Education Partnership (MEEP). is a unique collaboration of three major universities (Penn State, University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez, University of Washington), a premier high-technology government laboratory (Sandia National Laboratories), 100 corporate partners covering a wide spectrum of U.S. Industries, and the federal government that has provided seed funding for this project through the ARPA Technology Reinvestment Program (TRP). The partnership draws on the special strengths of each member and provides a unique opportunity to share physical and intellectual resources while exploring diverse educational approaches. Students at these institutions come from a wide range of geographic, socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. Sandia provides expertise in outreach, distance education, and advanced manufacturing processes including rapid prototyping. Overall, nineteen faculty members from six Engineering and Business departments, spanning five time zones, are engaged in this effort.

Industry Partnership: Over 100 companies are convinced of the value of this project have generously contributed money, strategic guidance, engineers in the classroom, equipment, mentorship to students, and job opportunities. In return, they are able to influence engineering education, identify engineering talent for potential employment, are exposed to new technologies, and obtain engineering project support. Industry partners are providing real-world problems and are the customers for students in our senior capstone design courses. To date, 148 industry projects have been completed across the three schools. Industry partners have contributed over $1M per year in cash and in-kind support.

Integrated Facilities and Curriculum: As a result of this initiative, over 14,000 square feet of Learning Factory facilities have been built or renovated across the partner schools and are now serving hundreds of students at each school each term. Five new courses which integrate manufacturing, design and business concerns, and which make use of these facilities, have been developed and instituted. These courses are an integral part of a new curriculum option in Product Realization which is now available at all three schools. They were developed by a unique team approach and their materials are available electronically over the Internet. The Learning Factory is the hands-on laboratory for these courses. Each university has its own Learning Factory with basic capabilities including machining, welding, general purpose tools, work areas, and CAD/CAM workstations. In addition, specialized facilities such as CNC machining, injection molding, inspection machines, metal foundry, and rapid prototyping are located at one or more of the universities and are available to the other partners.

NEW COURSES IN PRODUCT AND PROCESS REALIZATION:

Product Dissection: Students examine the way in which products and machines work: their physical operation, the manner in which they are constructed, and the design and societal considerations that determine the difference between success and failure in the marketplace. These dissections provide an ideal forum for demonstrating the application of engineering science fundamentals, and thereby reinforcing their retention and comprehension.

Concurrent Engineering: Students are exposed to the origin and meaning of the term concurrent engineering and discuss its role in modern engineering companies. Students gain an appreciation for the role of a formal product/process development strategy, and learn essential tools such as team decision making processes, value engineering, quality function deployment, project networks and planning, failure mode and effects analysis and DFM/DFA assessment tools.

Technology Based Entrepreneurship: Developed in conjunction with the School of Business, this course provides students with the fundamentals of entrepreneurship. It is designed for engineering, science, and business students interested in learning about entrepreneurship from a technology and practice-based point of view. The emphasis of the course is on innovation and creativity.

Process Quality Engineering: In this course we expose students to the importance of statistical and probabilistic methods in the current TQM culture. Students learn to apply probability models and statistical tools to real engineering data which they themselves acquire.

Interdisciplinary Senior Design Project: This capstone course provides students with the opportunity to practice the design of products, processes and enterprises from conceptualization to actualization. Students work in interdisciplinary teams on open-ended hardware-oriented projects provided by our industry partners. These projects involve students from Industrial, Mechanical, Electrical and Chemical Engineering.

Outreach: A prime goal of this project is to demonstrate the merits of the Learning Factory concept and to encourage similar developments at other universities. Agreeing to use the same courses and utilizing a team approach to course development has saved the partners considerable time and avoided needless duplication of efforts. The result is tested instructional materials of broad applicability. To facilitate the dissemination of these materials among the partners, and to make these same benefits available to the academic community at large, all curriculum materials have been developed using electronically accessible tools (Microsoft Word, Powerpoint, Authorware) and are available on CDROM or over the World Wide Web (at address http://lfserver.lf.psu.edu).

Jens E. Jorgensen - Professor of Mechanical Engineering - University of Washington (206) 543-5449 jorgen@u.washington.edu
John S. Lamancusa - Professor of Mechanical Engineering -Penn State University (814) 863-3350 jsl3@psu.edu
Lueny Morell de Ramirez - Professor of Chemical Engineering - University of Puerto Rico- Mayagüez (787) 265-3822 lueny@ece.uprm.edu

4 March 1998