Abstract:

Interaction between the University and both the Industry and Business is of paramount importance in enhancing learning, research, and the mutual relationship with the society. Venues of interaction and cooperation between an academic institution and business and industry can take a variety of forms, which may relate to students, faculty, or the administration. This paper presents a multi-perspective view of the final-year project of the industrial engineering and industrial management degrees in Mondragon University, and its role as a measurement tool of the university-industry relationship. This research work is based on observations from the last 10 years of experience during which 992 projects were performed within 145 production and service organizations, involving students in industrial engineering and industrial management degrees. The object of this paper is to analyze the main themes of the projects developed and verify their evolution according to the organizations' needs.The results obtained show that even there is a great amount of FYPs developed in the last years, they could be summarized taken into account the reality of two types of organizations and four areas of knowledge. According to this, the needs of the organizations in the last ten years, and even nowadays, are related to Management systems and Quality, Logistics, Improvement and quality and Lean manufacturing. So, the Polytechnic School’s researches should keep on working and deepening these areas of knowledge.