Collaborative Tools For Global Design Project Management: Case Study Of An Academic Experience
- Conference
- Location
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Louisville, Kentucky
- Publication Date
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June 20, 2010
- Start Date
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June 20, 2010
- End Date
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June 23, 2010
- ISSN
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2153-5965
- Conference Session
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Case Studies, Engineering Education and Outcome Assessment Around the Globe
- Tagged Division
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International
- Page Count
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11
- Page Numbers
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15.286.1 - 15.286.11
- DOI
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10.18260/1-2--15918
- Permanent URL
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https://peer.asee.org/15918
- Download Count
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629
Paper Authors
Ivan Esparragoza Pennsylvania State University
Ivan E. Esparragoza is an Associate Professor of Engineering at Penn State. His interests are in engineering design education, innovative design, global design, and global engineering education. He has introduced multinational design projects in a freshman introductory engineering design course in collaboration with institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean as part of his effort to contribute to the formation of world class engineers for the Americas. He is actively involved in the International Division of the American Society for Engineering Education and in the Latin American and Caribbean Consortium of Engineering Institution (LACCEI) as Vice-President for Research.
Ricardo Mejia Universidad EAFIT
Ricardo Mejía is Assistant Professor of the Department of Product Design Engineering at EAFIT University in Medellín, Colombia. He received his PhD degree in Mechanical Engineering from Ecole Centrale de Nantes, Nantes, France, in October 2008 and his M.Sc. degree in Manufacturing Systems from Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey-Campus Monterrey, Mexico, in December 2003. Ricardo worked from 1999 until 2008 in France, Germany and Mexico at several well known research centers. He has participated and coordinated research, consulting and training projects in the areas of global design, knowledge based engineering and information modeling for design and manufacturing. Ricardo has published over 20 scientific papers in journals, conferences and book chapters.
Carlos Rodriguez Universidad EAFIT
Carlos Rodríguez is an Associate Professor of the Department of Production Engineering. He received his postgraduate specialization degree in Polymer and Rubber Process Transformation, and a B.S in Mechanical Engineering degree from EAFIT University, Colombia. He has participated and coordinated research, consulting and training projects in the areas of advanced manufacturing, modeling for design and manufacturing, rapid prototyping, collaborative design and engineering education.
Abstract
NOTE: The first page of text has been automatically extracted and included below in lieu of an abstract
Collaborative Tools for Global Design Project Management: Case Study of an Academic Experience
Abstract
The management of information and the capture of design ideas are very critical during the product development and product lifecycle management. They could be very challenging tasks when time, efficiency and quality are important and the concurrent design team is physically distributed in different locations. However, the existing technology for communication, the increase of tools over the Internet and the cloud computing model have made possible and accelerated the means of sharing information synchronous and asynchronously in a very effective way. This has facilitated the work of teams that in many cases are geographically dispersed around the world. Therefore, there is a need to start preparing the future engineers in the use of collaborative tools for global design project management not only to schedule and coordinate all the required tasks for the project but also to capture all the information, ideas and concepts generated during the design process which contains valuable data that supports design decisions. This paper presents the use of several tools for communication and project management used in academic collaborative global design projects. In these projects, students are required to work with international partners from different universities in coordinating activities and documenting the conceptual design for a given problem. The paper reports the experience using the tools and discusses opportunities and pitfalls in the use of them as they were identified by the authors.
Introduction
The complexity of products in terms of functions and manufacturing1 and the need of improving quality and reducing product cost, which are critical factors to be competitive2 in the global economy, require the participation of many specialists in the development process of new products. As a result, concurrent engineering and collaborative design have been the operating mode in recent years for the product development industries with the aim of optimizing design cycles, improving quality and reducing design and production time in bringing new products into the global market3.
The process of integration of economies and societies as well as the rapid advances in technology are constantly changing the world’s business environment. Outsourcing, in-sourcing and off-shoring design and manufacturing operations are very common practices nowadays for many industries, making the international collaboration not only a common but also a necessary activity4. This global collaborative approach requires permanent communication among the members of the product development team for project planning and execution, and for effective and efficient management of data throughout the entire lifecycle of the product. The concept of “Integrated Product Development” means the integration of all the activities, methods, information and technologies to conceive the complete lifecycle of the product5. All these activities have been greatly simplified by the fast development of information and communication technologies6. Now, several computer based systems have been developed to support integrated product development to provide valuable and powerful tools to make easy the
Esparragoza, I., & Mejia, R., & Rodriguez, C. (2010, June), Collaborative Tools For Global Design Project Management: Case Study Of An Academic Experience Paper presented at 2010 Annual Conference & Exposition, Louisville, Kentucky. 10.18260/1-2--15918
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