Impart ‘design for production’ knowledge by application of functional prototyping

DS 76: Proceedings of E&PDE 2013, the 15th International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education, Dublin, Ireland, 05-06.09.2013

Year: 2013
Editor: John Lawlor, Ger Reilly, Robert Simpson, Michael Ring, Ahmed Kovacevic, Mark McGrath, William Ion, David Tormey, Erik Bohemia, Chris McMahon, Brian Parkinson
Author: Leutenecker, Bastian; Meboldt, Mirko; Lohmeyer, Quentin
Series: E&PDE
Institution: Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zurich, Switzerland
Section: Rapid Prototyping
Page(s): 617-622
ISBN: 978-1-904670-42-1

Abstract

In engineering design the early consideration of ‘Design for Production’ aspects is of particular importance to avoid high costs and time efforts caused by late redesign iterations. In design education this knowledge needs to be imparted theoretically as well as practically. Students have to experience the consequences of incorrect estimations or incomplete design definition when producing. This paper presents an educational project work that was recently carried out as a part of the ‘Innovation Process’ course at ETH Zurich with 550 participating undergraduate students of mechanical engineering. The project work especially includes the production of physical prototypes, which provides the advantage of making design knowledge more tangible. The paper presents the differences of simple funky prototypes and more complex functional prototypes and reflects their application in the context of educational objectives with a special focus on imparting ‘Design for Production’ knowledge.

Keywords: Design for production, functional prototyping, project-based learning

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