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Session 1566

Preparing Undergraduate Mechanical Engineering Students for the Global Marketplace—New Demands and Requirements

Charles Pezeshki, Russell T. Frame, and Brian Humann School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering Washington State University Pullman, WA 99164-2920

Abstract

With the maturity of such technologies as the Internet, advanced design and analysis software, and database management software, more and more companies are shifting to a Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) software base in which engineering activities are now located in cyberspace, as opposed to any particular geographic location. In fact, if current trends continue, U.S.-based multi-national corporations will become less and less dependent on continental U.S. engineering services, and more reliant on offshore providers. Current corporations such as the Boeing Company are already moving to “24/7” engineering cycles for new aircraft, with engineers around the globe working on the same shared parts and assemblies in their respective countries as the world turns. As large corporations like Boeing, Daimler-Chrysler and Black and Decker implement true paperless environments, with suppliers and manufacturers alike sharing information in a centralized digital model, corporations with engineers that are not educated in PLM methods will be obsolete.

Because of the cost differential between engineering services in the U.S. and other cheaper alternatives in countries such as India, U.S. graduates will need to have a value- added increment to justify their higher salary requirements. In this paper, the authors take a case study approach toward understanding the educational needs of mechanical engineers that academia supplies to various multi-national corporations, and suggest a curricular revision roadmap necessary to accommodate these changes. In particular, the vehicle to carry these curricular changes to fruition is the same set of tools that industry is currently using—PLM software. In the PLM environment, students can quickly access a variety of analysis and design tools that offer the ability to increase understanding of system physical behavior, as well as augment important problem solving abilities.

Proceedings of the 2004 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2004, American Society for Engineering

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Norton, M. G., & Pezeshki, C. (2004, June), Preparing Undergraduate Mechanical Engineering Students For The Global Marketplace—New Demands And Requirements Paper presented at 2004 Annual Conference, Salt Lake City, Utah. 10.18260/1-2--13336