Effective use of concurrent engineering tools in engineering education

Abstract

In this paper, the concurrent engineering design concepts, the tools that are used to achieve the concept of design for manufacturability, and the benefits one can expect by integrating the best practices for their process improvement are applied in an engineering education environment. The students are trained to use the concurrent engineering tools in their engineering courses such as use of design of experiments and Taguchi methods in conducting experiments to improve the product quality by controlling the process variables; and the use of design for manufacture, computer aided design, and value analysis in their multidisciplinary senior design projects in improving the product design, meeting the time schedule (project completion time), and providing customer satisfaction (client) with high quality and minimum cost. The results obtained through laboratory experiments and design projects are presented and discussed.