Conference Session

Manufacturing Education Innovation and Assessment

Collection

2006 Annual Conference & Exposition

Authors

David Wells, North Dakota State University

Tagged Divisions

Manufacturing

others.4,5,6 Following a landmark SME publications in 1985 and 1988,1,7 each of the historicaldocuments has offered guidance for developing curricula and specific course content in anincremental evolution. These recommendations maintained a constant focus on manufacturingengineering as a dominantly process-oriented discipline, enhanced with soft-skills. This papersuggests a more comprehensive framework for the manufacturing engineering disciplineencompassing the full spectrum of product realization.The Essence of Manufacturing: The essential nature of manufacturing is the creation ofproducts. Indeed, no products (outside of raw vegetables, perhaps) exist that are notmanufactured. Although global information exchange and market competitiveness