INTERNATIONAL MULTIDISCIPLINARY COLLABORATIVE PROJECT FOR DESIGN OF CONCEPTUAL PRODUCTS

Nowadays, due to globalization, the design and development process of complex systems demands distributed multidisciplinary work in order to improve product quality. Within the university context students are generally trained to work in groups, however, they often develop their academic projects with classmates of the same curricular program and the real industrial work situation is new for them. To make this experience more realistic, EAFIT University in Colombia and Coventry University in the United Kingdom have joined to set-up and develop an international collaborative project course. Two different disciplines have been paired, the engineering approach from Colombia and the industrial design competencies from the UK. In a recent project, a real industrial need was used to reinforce the real life constraints in order to expose students to a realistic engineering and design approach. The collaborative experience was strengthened with the co-location of all students after the UK participants travelled to Colombia for the final part of the project. Results are analyzed in this article showing a good international cooperation scenario that enhanced the competitive level of students involved, as well as offering practical and creative solutions to local industry.