ENGINEERING DESIGN PROJECTS IN EDUCATION: A REFERENCE FRAME BASED ON DESIGN METHODOLOGY

This article describes a unified approach in engineering design education in the faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Mechatronics at the University of Applied Sciences, Deggendorf, Germany. Nowadays products, which are supposed to be salable in the market, must have an innovative character and are in general characterized by so-called high-tech respectively intelligent functionalities, which are highly interdependent and which origin from mechanical, electrical and information processing disciplines. Indeed industry is looking for graduates with the core skills of mathematics and science but enhanced by a firm grounding in the engineering design process. Engineering design education therefore must feature an education frame, which considers the integration of disciplines, a creativity enhancing environment and a project and process model, which allows the development of innovative products. The paper presents an efficient method to educate students how to manage design projects and how to collaborate within specific design stages of the whole design process. The student project courses aim at combining existing design methodology with an appropriate interdisciplinary organisation and management structuring of a project. Therefore the education model considers design task clarification, creativity techniques, conceptual design, and embodiment design. The integration of enterprise representatives guarantees customer satisfaction and user feedback. A case study based on this collaborative education reveals that students can act, communicate and cooperate properly, if an appropriate reference frame is defined. The outcome of this approach is quite promising with respect to the acquisition of engineering knowledge, soft skills and the quality of the developed product. In this case an innovative product / prototype system was developed and manufactured which is not yet available in the market. The following figure shows relevant elements and building blocks of the approach.