Concepedia

Designing a Senior Capstone Course to Satisfy Industrial Customers

Robert H. Todd, Carl D. Sorensen, Spencer P. Magleby

Journal of Engineering Education · 1993 · 187 citations · 6 references

TL;DR

Industry is a key customer of engineering education, yet its needs are often overlooked, leading to graduates who fail to meet evolving industry demands. The study aims to identify evolving industrial needs, design a capstone course to address them, and evaluate its initial outcomes. The course, developed from industrial feedback, centers on multidisciplinary teams completing structured product and process design projects that produce functional specifications, designs, prototypes, and first‑production samples. Initial offerings demonstrate that the course aligns with industry needs and yields typical industrial deliverables such as functional specifications, designs, prototypes, and production samples.

Abstract

Abstract It is sometimes forgotten that industry is an important customer of engineering education. Ignoring this relationship has produced graduates that often fail to meet the changing needs of industry in today's competitive environment. On the basis of feedback from our industrial customers, faculty from Mechanical Engineering and Manufacturing Engineering at Brigham Young University have jointly developed a new senior capstone design course entitled “Integrated Product and Process Design.” This new capstone course is centered on industrial design and manufacturing projects. These projects involve both product and process design activities. Multidisciplinary teams of students are taught a structured development approach to produce typical industrial deliverables. These deliverables include a functional specification, product and process design, prototype, and first production sample. This paper identifies changing industrial needs, describes how the course was designed to meet these needs, and presents results from the initial offerings of the course.