Bringing Concurrent Engineering into Classroom through Multidisciplinary Product Design Project - Design and Construction of Chemical Detection Robots

This paper presents a study on how to utilize hands-on design project to simulate the actual concurrent engineering practice adopted by the companies when designing and developing new products.Students from the departments of mechanical engineering technology and computer engineering technology at the New York City College of Technology of CUNY were involved in this multi-disciplinary design project called Design and Construction of Chemical Detection Robot (DCCDR).For the past two decades, the concurrent engineering approach and product life cycle management philosophy have enabled many companies to shorten product development life cycle, improve the quality of their products and to be competitive in the fast-pace product design and development markets [1,2].The goal of this DCCDR project is, through the hands-on multi-disciplinary design activities with the help of concurrent engineering approach and life cycle management engineering software, to help students to master the arts and science on how to engage in the product design and development in the 21st century; to help the students to form new perspectives in solving engineering problems and dealing with issues associated with product design and development such as team work, time management, and balance between people skills and technical skills.Because of the time constraints in the classroom setting, this paper addresses two important components related to product design: engineering design components and project management components.The engineering design component consists of mechanical design, electrical and electronic design, and software design.The project management component addresses the issues on how to form effective concurrent engineering team, what organization forms best support the innovative needs of concurrent engineering, time management, how to select team leaders and team members.