Atlanta, Georgia
June 23, 2013
June 23, 2013
June 26, 2013
2153-5965
Manufacturing
11
23.585.1 - 23.585.11
10.18260/1-2--19599
https://peer.asee.org/19599
506
Dr. David L. Wells has been Professor of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering at North Dakota State University since January 2000. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in process engineering and production engineering systems design for conventional manufacturing, electronics assembly, biomedical products and micro-manufacturing. His instruction is characterized by heavy reliance upon project-based, design-centric learning. Course projects are drawn from real industrial applications with real industrial constraints, often interactive with a corporate sponsor. Students are challenged to design effective and efficient part manufacturing methods and complete production systems for commercial and industrial products. The common theme for students is mastering process and system design procedures that are applicable to any product in any industry. Graduates have been successful in manufacturing enterprises that produce virtually every type of product--literally, from spacecraft to foodstuffs. Dr. Wells also leads innovation teams in two engineering venues: product realization capstone projects and a unique multidisciplinary undergraduate discovery-learning course.
Dr. Wells’ active research lies in orthopedics, pharmaceutical manufacturing, micro-assembly, micro-machining, circuit board process engineering, and manufacturing engineering pedagogy. Through his research, Dr. Wells has supervised the completion of twelve graduate degrees in the past eight years. His publication history includes nearly seventy print publications and over forty invited presentations. He has addressed professional audiences in Ukraine, Japan, India, Brazil, Peru, Mexico and Canada, as well as in many United States venues. For many years, he has been active in the national leadership of Society of Manufacturing Engineers, American Society for Engineering Education, and ABET. Over the past twenty-nine years, he has been a central figure in the design, development and articulation of curricula for educating manufacturing engineers in the United States and in selected off-shore venues. He has also been an occasional contributor to Surface Mount Technology Association and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. In 2010, Dr. Wells was honored with the Joseph A. Siegel International Service Award by SME. He has also received manufacturing educator awards from ASEE and been included in several Who’s Who publications.
Prior to joining NDSU, Dr. Wells held manufacturing engineering and management positions in energy, aerospace, commercial sheet metal and automotive industries for twenty-six years. He also held a faculty position at University of Cincinnati for fifteen years, including thirteen years as chair of a department of some five hundred students. He has also served as an academic dean in an experimental manufacturing engineering education program at Focus: HOPE (Detroit, Michigan) and as chair of the IME Department at NDSU. Dr. Wells is a Certified Manufacturing Engineer and earned the B.S. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University and the Ph.D. in Engineering Management from the Missouri University of Science and Technology.
Extending the Dimensions of Manufacturing EngineeringFor many years, the discipline of Manufacturing Engineering has been steadily broadening. Oneof the seminal events in this process was the Curricula 2002 report from the Society ofManufacturing Engineers in 1994. At that time, the definition of what is manufacturing waspurposefully extended in a fashion that permitted the widest range of product production to beincluded in the field of “manufacturing”. In the succeeding two decades, that extensioningprocess has continued and gained momentum. The educational community for this discipline hasbeen responding somewhat unevenly. But with the advent of the Four Pillars framework fordescribing the discipline, a new clarity of opportunity arises for accelerated reform of curriculaleading to degrees in Manufacturing Engineering. One such opportunity incorporates medicaldevice manufacturing within a curriculum, along with concomitant support in broader study inbasic sciences. This paper will examine some of the practical aspects of this form of extensionand offer some experiences (successes and tribulations) encountered along this path.163 words
Wells, D. L. (2013, June), Extending the Dimensions of Manufacturing Engineering Paper presented at 2013 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Atlanta, Georgia. 10.18260/1-2--19599
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