Concurrent engineering concepts applied to concurrent education and research

Concurrent Engineering (CE) has attracted more attention in recent years regarding its reducing the time to market, cutting down the total cost, and improving quality. As a new concept and methodology, CE has not been widely implemented in industry, research and engineering education vet. This paper describes a newly developed CE course which employs the method of concurrent education. Similar 20 concurrent engineering, concurrent education aims to break the barriers of traditional sequential, or step-by-step, isolated curricula. Concurrent education integrates multi-stages of curricula and brings interdiscipline teachings into classroom. In this course, a specific research project, Design and Manufacturing of a Rear Wheel Spindle and its Assembly for the FSAE Race Car, was used as an example to illustrate application of CE. A recent survey conducted by ASME council on education has identified the top to "Best Practices" in product realization process. It also found that most new engineering graduates lack the fundamental knowledge and skills of the "Best Practices': Concurrent engineering is one of the top 10 best practices. In the newly developed courses of CE using the research project and concurrent education method described in this paper, students not only can learn about concurrent engineering, but also can learn new technologies faster, more efficiently and practically. In this course, the main components of CE: Advanced Tools in CE, Tele-Communication, Tele-Manufacturing, Team Spirit and Leadership are all emphasized.