Hands-On Manufacturing Engineering - An Analytical Study

A new paradigm in manufacturing engineering education was born as a result of long and diverse meetings and discussion between five academic educational institutes and five new industrial partners in Michigan. In 1993, the above mentioned entities joined in the Greenfield Coalition for new manufacturing engineering education. The Greenfield Coalition was one of several throughout the U.S. sponsored grants from NSF. The objective was to help training and educating our students to be the "renaissance engineers". To reach those very challenging objectives, the Greenfield coalition started building the new paradigm in a non-classical academic approach. The paradigm consisted of two avenues; the academic curriculum and the hands-on program. The curriculum was structured in a reverse order process where the skills of the graduate were determined through a series of meeting between educators (the university partners) and the customers (the Industrial partners). Once the skills were agreed upon, knowledge areas were identified which led to choose the courses needed to serve the goal. The hands-on program was very rigorously designed to help students acquire the best possible experience in real-world manufacturing. All students in the program worked 40 hours a week in the Center for Advanced Technologies (CAT); a state of the art factory which manufactured parts for the industrial partners. Each student has to follow a comprehensive rotation plan that will expose him or her to various departments from shipping and receiving through engineering. Teaching by objective was a theme that was used in development of courses. These objectives were reflected in the design of the syllabi of the courses and were served through well-defined outlines. Just-in-time math and science ideas and self-paced learning were introduced in these programs to help interrelations between engineering courses and the math and science prerequisites. The nontraditional approach to education was borrowed by some universities, were self-paced and one-room math schoolhouse type of classes was introduced. The program incurred many challenges but opened up many opportunities for success for students. Despite the success, the program still faced considerable administrative challenges. The experience proved that the collaboration could benefit Academic institutions and industrial partners and above all benefit the students. Coordination of work among different academic institutes was one of the biggest challenges. Each institution would be part of the degree offered by other institutions which created many problems, yet it opened a door for possible improvement of inter-academic institution relations. Many years after the financial resources from NSF and industry dried up, this paper will: Analyze the Greenfield Coalition educational paradigm. Discuss successes and failure of the Paradigm. Recommend a sustainable approach to this educational model