Abstract:

Industrial Engineering, as a sector of Romanian higher education, is booming, thanks to the high demand for engineers on the Romanian labor market. Production processes that are increasingly modern and specific to each organization have led to the increase in the demand for PhD graduates in Industrial Engineering. The high volume of technical knowledge that they have to master requires too much time in the individual study system. Hence, we put forward the use of comparative research within groups of PhD students with similar technical concerns.

We have thus exemplified the use of comparative research in the design of modern cutting tools with fragmented edges. In order to develop a new doctoral training system, we have suggested the grouping of PhD students interested in this field into three research teams. We believe that their theoretical and practical instruction must follow the same algorithm as the one needed for the design of a modern tool. During the training, the teams will work both jointly and separately, depending on the stage of the design algorithm in which they will be.

The paper demonstrates the usefulness of this training algorithm in the particular case of designing a cutting tool for holes. By using comparative research teams, design times decrease considerably, whereas the knowledge transfer between academics and PhD students in engineering intensifies. PhD students can subsequently adjust this training algorithm to industry, at their workplaces. We consider that the proposed training system accelerates the dissemination of academic knowledge in industry.

Keywords:

Engineering, PhD students, research, training.