EE CURRICULUM - CONTINUOUS PROCESS IMPROVEMENT?

Times are changing. Products are more sophisticated; consumers expect higher quality, lower costs, and negligible hazards for people and environment; and competition dictates an ever reduced time between a product's concept and actual production. These changes demand that engineering education be re-evaluated. What are the relations between manufacturing and engineering education? Engineering education must put all components of manufacturing into context. It is not adversarial with the research and development component. Rather, we take the attitude of "concurrent engineering" [2] in placing R&D as a key member of a team with engineering design, manufacturing design, and the other disciplines.