Engineering Design Education: Practical Methods of Product Development

One major issue in teaching engineering students is using of specific situation-oriented methods within the product development process. This topic has to be considered in technical education of engineers. The focus of this paper is on communication of design related aspects of product development to mechanical engineering students at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). The course “Practical Methods of Product Development” offered at Institute for Product Development can be attended by the students during their education in mechanical engineering at Technical University of Munich. The students are confronted with concrete tasks. They should develop innovative concepts for the existing products using specific engineering design methods. At the end of the courses they build models or prototypes and present their results be reflecting the used methods. The goal of this course is provide knowledge, design principles and develop soft skills related to the professional practice as engineers in the field of product development. Thus, the students are prepared to transfer knowledge from the theory to the practical applications.