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A Manufacturing Systems Capstone Course

John C. Anderson Oregon Institute of Technology

INTRODUCTION Capstone courses serve a valuable function in Engineering and Engineering Technology curricula. Typically these courses offer the student an opportunity to integrate the lessons learned in engineering science classes, as well as transition from the textbook problems with a limited scope to more open ended problems.

A capstone course also offers the opportunity to fill in some gaps in the student’s academic background prior to entering the professional ranks.

The Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) [1] has developed a quantitive survey instrument to measure the technical and professional competency of newly hired manufacturing engineers and rate how well these new engineers met expectations. If the survey respondent rated a competency of a new engineer as “below” or “well below” expectations, they were asked to rate how important this competency was to the success of their company.

Using the results of this survey SME ranked the competencies in order by their importance to organizations and the frequency they were cited as falling short of expectations. The competencies are listed below in order. 1. Business knowledge/ skill 2. Project management 3. Written communications 4. Supply chain management 5. Specific manufacturing processes (hands-on experience in at least one process) 6. Oral communications/ listening 7. International perspective 8. Manufacturing process control 9. Quality 10. Problem solving 11. Teamwork/ working effectively w/ others 12. Materials 13. Product/ process design 14. Engineering fundamentals 15. Personal Attributes

This listing proves a good source of input for the design of a manufacturing oriented capstone course.

In addition, the thrust of the course should be determined. Manufacturing engineering encompasses a wide variety of topics. Several valid approaches are possible in a capstone course, including quality systems, process analysis, or a more general approach.

Proceedings of the American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2005, American Society for Engineering Education 1

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Anderson, J. (2005, June), A Manufacturing Systems Capstone Course Paper presented at 2005 Annual Conference, Portland, Oregon. 10.18260/1-2--15039