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Session 3142

Collaborative Environments for Managing Industrial Projects

S. Gary Teng, Paul Cheng-Hsin Liu Engineering Management Program, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte/ California State University, Los Angeles

Abstract

Embedding industrial projects into engineering education is becoming popular in engineering schools. The logistics involved in sending students to companies to work on projects is complicated and time consuming. Therefore finding an effective way to monitor and manage industrial projects is crucial for faculty to gain long-term success in implementing industrial projects in an engineering curriculum. This paper focused on one of the major burdens in offering industrial project experience to engineering students, the handling of communications among project teams, industrial partners, and supervising faculty. In this paper, the approach of using collaborative environments is proposed for the reduction of some communication related problems in industrial project implementation process. WebCT and a low cost web-based collaborative environment are the tools suggested for managing industrial projects. The purpose is to use available tools for managing projects that can reduce the complexity involved in monitoring industrial projects.

Introduction

Today’s engineers and managers often are in charge of various engineering design, improvement, and implementation projects in their companies. Managing and handling projects is an essential part of work for most engineers and engineering managers. Because of this trend, most engineering programs have some kind of industrial project format embedded into their curriculum1,2,3,4. So it is desirable for programs to include industrial project experience in the undergraduate and/or graduate curriculum5,6,7,8.

Teng and his colleagues9 offered a Teaching in the Factory approach which provides engineering students team experiences in industrial settings. The industrial settings include the working environment that an engineer may encounter, such as a manufacturing facility, an operations facility, or an office environment. This approach provides students the opportunities to work with industry on projects in a real operational environment. These experiences give students solid technical education, strengthen their project management skills, and expose them to significant engineering challenges found in real industrial settings.

Lenoir10 presented guidelines for success for capstone projects. Moore11 discussed issues involved in externally sponsored senior projects. Jordan and Schell12 pointed out some legal

Proceedings of the 2003 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2003, American Society for Engineering Education

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Liu, P. C., & Teng, S. G. (2003, June), Collaborative Environments For Managing Industrial Projects Paper presented at 2003 Annual Conference, Nashville, Tennessee. 10.18260/1-2--12149